The Christian Party encourages self-employment where possible because we believe in self-determination and personal development, as well as personal responsibility and social justice.

The Christian Party welcomes the growing trend towards self-employment as a sign of growing self-confident entrepreneurship. The identification, use and development of one’s natural talents will lead to a happier workforce. The role of government is to facilitate employment, support employers and employees, and maintain standards in employment through properly targeted employment legislation with the minimum of red tape.
As of 2018, 27 million private sector jobs compare to 5.3 million public sector workers. The public sector now accounts for 16.5% of UK employment, the lowest percentage since records began in 1999.

The public sector had outgrown a healthy balance in our economy and it was not sustainable.  It had grown in tandem with big and unmanageable government, and the transition to small and manageable government will accompany the transition to a healthier balance between the public and private sectors.   This needs to be managed with a long-term vision.
The government’s role in public sector employment is to promote the essential aims of government such as defence, employment and health, and to kick-start new sectors that need national support until they are self-supporting.  It needs to encourage self-management and to use the public sector as a breeding ground to identify and release personal potential.  The UK is well known for pioneering new developments, but the inability to implement change across large institutions such as the NHS within the working life-time of such pioneers is sapping their energy, frustrating their usefulness and denying the UK of the benefit of their vision and talents.   Government can use its authority to hasten change in large institutions and to release and maximise the potential of such pioneers either within the public sector, or in conjunction with the private sector.
This demonstrates the necessity of a healthy relationship between the public and private sectors instead of the ‘for or against’ attitudes of the major political parties.  This requires a proper appreciation of the role of government, employer, employee and trade unions. In moving from big to small government, the standards attained in the workplace and employment need to be safeguarded and maintained in a respectful manner consistent with social justice.

Trade unions have a role as well as government to encourage the development of the workforce they represent, and not simply to maintain the status quo.  The Christian Party encourages trade union leaders to engage with this process of change to benefit their members.  On-the-job identification of transferable skills, the use of job search facilities and retraining as part of continuous professional development will help to reduce the job-dependency mindset in public sector employment – a mindset which promotes complacency and unwillingness to challenge the system, even when that system is manifestly failing.  Institutional abuse, incompetence and corruption is tolerated because of one’s dependence upon the institution for one’s salary and pension.

Trust in and between management and workforce will be addressed as the best means to avoid damaging industrial disputes.  Trade unions can encourage and embrace change, by showing that a happy workforce is a self-developing one, with a vision for self-fulfilment.  It is better for their members to have a planned transition into a developing sector rather than the inevitable job cuts in the ‘sudden death’ environment created by prolonged industrial disputation.  Imaginative ways of saving jobs and of skill development through job sharing and apprenticeships will be encouraged.

A healthy cooperation between government, employers, employees and trade unions will enable public sector workers to bypass the dole queue and move into jobs in the private sector with the minimum of disruption.

The effects of the coronavirus pandemic is an opportunity for change, self-development and new ways of working and should be embraced rather than feared, but the role of Government in such a circumstance is not merely financial and supportive but as a catalyst for change and entrepreneurship.
We will explore options to manage this transition, beginning with entrepreneurial programmes in schools promoting self-esteem and a ‘yes we can’ attitude.   We will begin with the rising generation, recognising that older workers need more help with transition and in identifying transferable skills. Ageism and retirement will be addressed with the help of trade unions to ensure that experience is rewarded, rather than various strategies such as constructive dismissal, failure to adapt to the changing needs of the business and workforce but also of the aging workers.  Recognition of such factors will be a better course of action instead of relying on or using the legalistic and adversarial sanctions of spurious equalities legislation.  Academic identification of new and aspirational jobs needs to work in tandem with on-the-job retraining and job search facilities to enable public sector workers to develop transitional skills with the minimum of disruption.

The Christian Party expects the Government to facilitate such changes.