Care for those
who care for us.

To all those responsible for the welfare, standards and administration of our public services,

I am writing to ask for a simple change in perspective.

We ask people throughout public service to care for us.

Nurses, doctors, carers, paramedics, firefighters, police officers, civil servants, council workers, teachers, support workers, members of our armed forces, prison staff, emergency workers and countless others spend their working lives maintaining the society in which the rest of us live.

We should also be allowed to care for them.

I therefore ask government and public bodies to establish a simple principle:

Every person working in public service should be able to receive a decent meal while working, without means testing, rank, stigma, embarrassment or social exclusion.

And where members of the public wish to contribute towards those meals simply because they care, there should be a safe and straightforward way for them to do so.

This should not mean handing money to an individual public servant.

It should not purchase access.

It should not purchase a decision.

It should not purchase favourable treatment.

It should not create a debt.

It should not require gratitude.

It should not matter whether the recipient is senior or junior, wealthy or poor, popular or unnoticed.

It should simply mean:

You are here helping us. Please eat.

Care is not corruption

There is a necessary reason why rules concerning gifts and hospitality exist.

A police officer, doctor, planning officer, civil servant, judge, regulator or any other person exercising public responsibility must remain independent.

Nobody should be able to buy their judgement.

Nobody should be able to purchase preferential treatment.

That protection must remain.

But protecting people from corruption should not require us to remove ordinary human kindness from public life.

There is a difference between:

“I bought your lunch, therefore you owe me something.”

and:

“There is lunch available because somebody cared whether you had eaten.”

Those are not the same relationship.

The first creates an obligation.

The second should create none.

Remove the personal transaction

The simplest answer may therefore be to remove the transaction between donor and individual worker altogether.

Create an approved Public Service Meal system.

A person, community, charity, organisation or business could contribute a meal.

The meal would then belong to the scheme.

Not to a named official.

Not to somebody deciding that person's case.

Not to somebody awarding a contract.

Not to somebody whom the donor wishes to influence.

The donor would receive no preferential access and no special treatment.

Workers would receive food because they are human beings doing work for the public.

Permission would therefore exist through the structure itself rather than requiring an awkward ethical decision every time somebody tries to perform a small act of kindness.

No means testing

It should be unconditional.

Do not ask whether the nurse earns enough to buy lunch.

Do not ask whether the cleaner deserves it more than the consultant.

Do not ask whether the firefighter has savings.

Do not ask whether the civil servant is sufficiently poor.

Do not separate people into deserving and undeserving groups.

The moment we do that, a simple shared meal becomes another administrative system of judgement.

Feed everybody who is working.

Some people will need it desperately.

Some will simply appreciate it.

Some may decline it.

That is fine.

Giving something universally removes much of the shame associated with needing it.

Nobody has to announce:

“I cannot afford to eat today.”

They simply eat with everyone else.

Money is not the purpose

Money has practical value as a means of exchange, but money alone has no moral understanding.

It does not know hunger.

It does not know exhaustion.

It does not know gratitude.

It does not know loneliness.

It does not know kindness.

It does not know what somebody standing in front of us actually needs.

Human beings do.

That is why I am not proposing simply giving individual workers money.

I am proposing that we make it easier for one human being to recognise the need of another.

Food has an immediate human purpose.

Someone is hungry.

They eat.

Someone has worked through an emergency.

They eat.

Someone has spent their day caring for strangers.

They eat.

There is very little abstraction required.

Understanding need, want and desire

Human relationships become healthier when we understand the difference between need, want and desire.

A person may need food.

They may want a particular meal.

They may desire recognition, companionship or comfort.

Understanding those differences allows us to respond proportionately rather than attempting to solve everything through money.

Sometimes the answer is not another payment system.

Sometimes the answer is lunch.

Sometimes it is a cup of tea.

Sometimes it is somebody saying thank you.

Sometimes it is simply being treated as a person rather than as a function of government.

Those small interactions create relationships between institutions and the people they serve.

Relationships create understanding.

Understanding reduces fear.

And reduced fear makes cooperation considerably easier.

Shame, guilt and fear

We should also be careful about systems that make ordinary kindness feel suspicious.

Shame, guilt and fear can become powerful mechanisms of social control.

They make people withdraw from one another.

They encourage us to think only about ourselves:

What will people think of me?

Will I get into trouble?

Am I allowed to help?

Will somebody misunderstand me?

But an individual does not exist separately from everyone else.

The one is made by the many, and the many are made by individual people.

A functioning society therefore cannot be built entirely around protecting isolated individual interests.

It must also preserve our ability to care for one another.

I should be allowed to buy someone lunch

If the money I am spending is lawfully mine, and I am asking for absolutely nothing in return, I should ordinarily be able to say:

“Thank you for what you do. May I buy you lunch?”

The public servant must equally remain free to say:

“No, thank you.”

Neither person should owe the other anything.

Where the nature of the recipient's work makes a direct gift inappropriate, give me another route.

Let me buy lunch for the ward.

Let me contribute meals for the station.

Let me feed everyone on the shift.

Let me contribute anonymously.

Let the contribution enter a common pool.

Separate the giver from any official decision.

Record it transparently where necessary.

Remove every reasonable opportunity for influence.

But please do not remove the kindness itself.

A practical safeguard

A national framework could be extremely simple.

Public bodies could provide or approve a universal meal system in which:

• every worker has equal access;
• participation is voluntary;
• no worker is means-tested;
• no donor can select an individual decision-maker;
• no contribution creates priority, access, influence or obligation;
• individual workers receive food rather than cash or cash-equivalent gifts;
• contributions connected to procurement, regulation, litigation or another active decision are appropriately separated;
• donations and expenditure are transparent and auditable;
• dietary, religious, allergy and disability requirements are respected;
• workers may decline without explanation;
• nobody receiving a meal is required to identify or thank its donor.

The purpose would be deliberately narrow:

Feed people who are caring for society.

What I am asking government to do

I ask government, NHS organisations, local authorities and every other relevant public body to examine whether their existing rules unnecessarily prevent innocent acts of public gratitude.

Where safeguards are genuinely necessary, retain them.

Where rules prevent corruption, retain them.

Where rules protect impartiality, retain them.

But where a rule merely prevents one person from feeding another because everybody is frightened of what kindness might look like, please reconsider it.

Create a nationally recognised route through which the public can provide modest meals to public-service workers without creating personal obligation or preferential treatment.

Make permission clear in advance.

Make the safeguards understandable.

Make participation universal.

Make it unconditional.

And make it ordinary.

The principle

Those who care for us are not machines.

They become hungry.

They become tired.

They have families.

They have difficult days.

They worry.

They make mistakes.

They learn.

They grow.

They are people.

If we want caring institutions, we must create an environment in which the people inside those institutions are themselves cared for.

A meal will not repair every problem in public services.

But perhaps that is precisely why it matters.

It is small.

It is understandable.

It is immediate.

It asks for nothing in return.

And it reminds everyone involved of something that bureaucracy can sometimes make remarkably difficult to remember:

We belong to the same society.

Nobody should be able to buy government.

Nobody should be able to buy justice.

Nobody should be able to buy medical judgement.

Nobody should be able to buy preferential treatment.

But we should still be allowed to buy each other lunch.

With care and respect,

Al