Efficiency trap

Ms Flanders wrote
'We all believe the savings are there to be had. We just don't trust the government to find them'.

Not true, we simply don't trust the government about anything.

If the NAO are unable to establish with any certainty what the government claim, do you not worry that, come a change of government, the new government discover, much as the new Greek government did, that UK debt is much greater than claimed?

All these savings as the UK drug market grows rapidly in value doubling by the end of 2010.

Public Shambles.

The most reliable measure of if we have 'efficiency' savings will be the number of bureaucrats cut in the departments NOT the frontline staff (e.g MOD, NHS). Would imagine this will be enormous potential but all those extra redundancies? Cant imagine a politician being keen on that.

But while we are looking for big numbers - why not just cancel or substantially delay the trident programme (25bn) I am sure we have enough nukes without this - anyway - the next time a nuke will be set off in hostilities it will probably be one smuggled in and detonated so there isnt any real 'aggressor' country anyway.

Of course it would be far, far too simplistic to compare the amount spent at the end of the period with the amount spent at the beginning of the period in constant prices wouldn't it. Or as a share of GDP say.

Surely the real question is: what should the government be doing anyway?

Currently, we have "Big Government" that wants to tax loads and spend loads, and wants to micromanage everything with a big top down centralised approach which is bound to be inefficient.

We need to question everything that the government is doing and ask whether it should be doing it at all. For example, is it our responsibility to try instilling democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan? Should we be giving billions to corrupt African governments when little of it actually reaches the people? Do we really need a Welsh Assembly that costs £12billion a year?

No doubt at least someone will want each program the government has, but since no one will want to pay the interest on our enormous and rising deficit, then something has to give.

So the present government are looking for savings.
There is no doubt in anyone's mind that they have spent all of the tax-payer's money on supporting the financial services industry, so now the tax-payer must once again suffer by having their services cut.
So what is it to be....less money for education; less money for the NHS; less support for the un-employed, disabled, and pensioners.
How many times must the tax-payer keep paying for the incompetance of the City of London?

That such inefficiency can be declared about making savings just shows how little expertise has been gained, or how little experience has been accumulated, in doing such exercises. In part it is a matter of motivation. So perhaps such motivation should be applied.

If there is GBP 3 billion a year to be saved and Gordon knows where it is then why hasn't he been saving it before?

I fear it will be like in Yes Prime Minister where they cut civil servant numbers by merely reclassifying them.

Does this count as a government saving by the way?

https://www.ft.com/cms/s/9e691d60-e29e-11de-b028-00144feab49a,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F9e691d60-e29e-11de-b028-00144feab49a.html&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fsearch.ft.com%2Fsearch%3FqueryText%3Ddefence%2Blogistics%26ftsearchType%3Dtype_news

One of the biggest problems is that every NHS trust (or any public sector body for that matter) uses different policies for categorising expenditure. One hospital will call a ward manager part of the management structure whilst the next will claim they are front line staff.

By employing a consultant the 1st will make the case to re-designate the ward manager as front line and claim to have cut their management costs. The 1st hospital has now spent more money whilst the second cannot claim the same saving. Worse still the 1st will be highlighted as having made improvements!

I was sat in a Police college canteen when I heard that an MP had asked how much it costs to train a PC under the recently introduced system. I groaned inwardly as I realised that the finance systems did not allow what should have been a simple calculation. The only simple answer I could suggest was that, now the question had been asked, the real figure had just increased by 10% as consultants would now be employed to work out the real cost. Here again one Police force adds in overhead costs whilst another chooses not to...

Until real savings can be identified nothing will change. I have 10k words of notes relating to real savings that need to be made - and all without any impact on front line services.

The challenges with delivering any of this are:

1. Limited appetite for public sector change with civil servants
2. Limited capability to change - most civil servants have limited leadership or innovation capability
3. Limited understanding of how to change (usually a mixture of people, process and technology - but how many civil servants understand these well?)
4. Confused messages like Andy Burnham's recent u-turn on NHS provision whereby the NHS incumbent supplier is the preferred supplier of choice (why?) when policy has been for the last 10 years Any Willing Provider (or is that a sop to the unions?)
5. Large government likes large contracts and they very rarely deliver to budget - see RPA IT, DfT Shared Services, NHS LSP contracts, etc, etc
6. Limited business, change and technology skills in parliament and therefore the ability to understand how to deliver services. With many MPs coming form a legal background, they can write a mean sentence but wouldn't now how to deliver a letter. This manifests itself in creating policies that are very dfficult to implement
7. An arrogance on the part of the politicians and civil service that they know best for the country - they are not good at listening or taking time to understand.

So apart from that (and the list could go on), there is every chance of delivering the savings. Lower consultancy spend - well rather like bankers, you take the brains away and the body can't think - so is lower consulting spend the real answer? In some cases yes, but I wonder if the civil service has the capacity to make anything like the scale of change it needs to without bringing in greater brain power and know-how....

So more spending, delivering not very much. There must be a better way....

We have a General Election coming up next year so we have a real chance to do something. What we should all do is only vote for someone that has significant experience in running something in the private sector.

The private sector simply cannot afford the waste, bureaucracy and inefficiency of government because private companies would go bust. I imagine that any competent manager from the private sector would be shocked to see how government departments are run. Unfortunately, too many MPs have never run a business and have no clue about efficiency.

Government; definition; a group of individuals engaged in the pursuit of increasing their own wealth as fast possible, prior to an election.

Politicians; definition: same as above.

Governance; definition; public sector workers endeavouring to keep the fabric of society intact, whilst appeasing politicians.

Actually there is no need to get over-cynical about all this.

There are ways of making clear savings; it's just that the Civil Service are strangers, culturally, to the tools of process management.

Simplistically, anything spent 'off the line', apart from essential associated organising tasks, can potentially be cut without impacting on service provision. Therefore all you need to do is fund line staff fully and set an administration overhead budget of, say, 5% on the rest. We used to do something similar in the 70's but since that went out of fashion (replaced consecutively by ZBB, TQM, MBT etc, etc) ancillary staff costs mushroomed. Experienced operations staff will be all too aware of the tendency of off-line staff to interfere with, and slow down, the process so any savings there often lead to extra unplanned efficiency gains.

The other big saver would be to reduce reliance on Inspection as a control tool. Demming said something along these lines way-back. Can we afford to employ people incentivised (sic) to criticise front-line people simply to earn their fees? Are not the incentives skewed? It might be possible to justify this overhead if they were given direct responsibility to manage through any perceived shortcomings but they aint.

There are, in short, plenty of ways to make and measure savings and no real reason to assume lack of good faith. It's surely better to spend as high a proportion of public money on things with a clear multiplier effect than not, even if you think this clearly the wrong time for fiscal rectitude.

Spending money is one side of the equation. It is the easiest thing to do, and the easiest to measure.
Proving that money has been spent wisely is much harder to prove.

In business, an attempt to justify spending is made by estimating the return on investment. If money is spent by a business it must bring tangible reward, such as an increase in: sales, market share, profitability, new product offerings, production efficiency, etc.

In the public sector, it is much harder to quantify whether the additional benefit received from government spending is a good or bad return on the money spent.

The current government is fond of saying it has increased spending on public services by £Xbn. But one always has the feeling that we citizens don't receive the full £Xbn in improved services. For example, if the government says it's increased spending by £5bn, I tend to 'feel' that services have improved by only £2bn as a result. In other words, I get the impression that £3bn has leaked away and not caused an improvement in the UK's general standard of living. The trouble is, it's better to have spent the £5bn than not to have spent anything. Therefore, this encourages yet further waste.

Now the government is telling us that it knew all along that £3bn was leaking away, but now it is able to cork it, and deliver £2bn benefit from only £2bn spending.

Maybe this is possible. Seeing as all the workers and infrastructure are now there, all we need to do is maintain them. Maintenance is cheaper than creation.
The setting up of new improved services always suffers sunk costs; but once the services have bedded in, they can be rolled out at a minimal unit cost of production........in theory.

Stephanie is right on this one. I worked for a management consultancy (shoot me now!) in the middle of the Gershon Review and I did a lot of work with Central & Local Government. Half of the efficiency savings made by government had to be 'cashable' (i.e. demonstrably saved money that could be spent elsewhere) and half could be 'non-cashable' (i.e. getting greater outputs or improved quality for the same inputs).

I saw very few, genuine and transformative non-cashable savings in my work. With our current debt position, savings have to be cashable: they have to clearly result in money saved. It requires no less an effort than redefining what we think Government should spend its money on. We have to consider things like co-payments in the Health Service; hypothecated charges like road-tolls etc.

WHY SHOULD GOVERNMENTS DO THINGS THE EASY WAY WHEN THEY CAN DO THINGS THE HARD WAY!

Governments have a tendency to create "savings" using the economist approach to figures: just change them to say what you would like. Any good bureaucrat will tell you that it costs a lot of money to save money. Politicians usually try to cut those things that citizens like best so the public will support not making the cuts. Politicians protect their friends. Politicans protect big business and banking. Politicians protect themselves. The issue you raise is worth addressing: Where are we as nations when the people no longer believe their governments, no matter who is elected? Once everyone sits around and decides what they want to protect in the budget there is not much left for "savings." A capturing of a couple of the banking bonuses would help here and there but we wouldn't want to hinder the rich just because everyone else is having a difficult time. Get ready for higher taxes or fees or however they decide to raise the money, it will certainly be on you. Maintaining the status quo when the status quo keeps failing is a strategy that is difficult to defend.

Rumour has it that Gershon is about to advise the Tories on squeezing waste out of government. Are we about to get a commentary on what is and isn't viable - #16 has a point about cashable savings.

Efficiency Clap-Trap is more likely!

A typical report from the Public Accounts Committee into the DOT shared services savings initiative (report 57 from session 2007-08)says:

"The Department initially estimated that it would cost £55 million to set up the Programme and that the benefits over the first 10 years would be £112 million, yielding a net benefit of £57 million. Current forecasts show that the Programme will cost £121 million, benefits over the first 10 years will be £40 million and the net cost to the Department will be £81 million."

And there are loads like this on their website, where cost overwhelms any delivered benefit, just go take a look.

My wastepaper basket is more organised than Government and Civil service administration.

#15 MrTweedy - Return on Investment.

Although its hard to always work out a return on investment, many in the public sector do not think this way at all. In fact, you can see the culture of managers who have money allocated to a budget that is "mine to spend", and must be spent even if not really needed.

I remember seeing the first evidence of the current attitude to waste by this government about 8-9 years ago at my children's junior school. Every classroom was fitted out with expensive ceiling mounted projectors and electronic white-boards. Being a bit of a technology nerd I was interested to see how they were used. And surprise, surprise, over the 3 years my children were at the school all this technology was left idle, apart from literally the odd occasion when "a" teacher used a projector.

The fact that my children were more IT literate than their teachers, even at 7 years old, is no excuse to waste money on throwing technology at un-trained teachers an naively thinking you are improving teaching.

I bet we could fill these blogs with real stories of how our taxes have been wasted.

Gordon Browns announcement is just SPIN.
The issue is how we are going to reign back this governments excessive spending .Its been quite clear to all (Except the treasury) that the forcast for £175 Billion borrowing this year will fall short.
We need to make cuts now and fast or the consequences to front line services will be savage post the June election. The government is running this country on a credit card and when the credit stops the effect will be millions of people not being paid / severe (20 % reduction) in terms and conditions.
Delaying the inevitable is simply folly.Gordon Browns announcement is just SPIN.
The issue is how we are going to reign back this governments excessive spending .Its been quite clear to all (Except the treasury) that the forcast for £175 Billion borrowing this year will fall short.
We need to make cuts now and fast or the consequences to front line services will be savage post the June election. The government is running this country on a credit card and when the credit stops the effect will be millions of people not being paid / severe (20 % reduction) in terms and conditions.
Delaying the inevitable is simply folly.

Brown's efficiency savings he trumpets today are simply rehashed soundbites from previous announcements. We will not get the deficit under control with efficiency savings. On top of that he wants to tax the rich some more. New Labour spin, with Old Labour idiocy. I only pray the country can see clearly the lies, hypocrisy and envy that the Labour Party now represents.

If they can find that level of savings now what on earth has the government been doing over the last 12 years? The truth is that many savings need more money to spend before real sustainable savings accrue and paybacks of less than two years are not common. Efficiency savings are often newspeak for cuts - either directly or as an unintended consequence. Cutting back the NHS IT programme will be presented as a saving even though not all the £12.7bn has been spent.

Actual savings can only be from spending less on employing people or buying fewer goods and services. When things are described as "efficiency savings" it means that output, of either goods or services, is maintained. However, the pain for either employees or suppliers is real or else there is no saving. So when the government says it's going to get efficiency savings the questions are simple:

"How much less are you spending on employing people and how much less are you spending on buying stuff?"

If they cannot answer those questions it's all the stuff that comes out the back of a bull.

Simple economics. There are too many civil servants and too many quangos producing pointless reports and administering red tape in expensive offices with too much paid sick leave and holidays and vastly over-inflated final salary pensions.
Get every government department to cut 10% of their headcount, abolish every quango that can't prove that it has a positive net economic benefit and switch the whole lot to money purchase pensions so I don't have to support them for the rest of their lives.

You can't convince a skeptic of anything. The skeptic is always right and the other is always wrong. There comes a point where people's business is their own and you shouldn't interfere.

You should be worrying about your own business. But look here we are worrying about what everyone else is doing. Why is that? Is it because they might be scheming against us? They must be so let's go get them before they get us!

My experience of cost reductions at work is that they only work if combined with a ban on re-organisation. Cut each budget by 10% and allow the people doing the job to decide what to stop doing. Any other system just means that the work and spend just pops up somewhere else.

Call me old fashioned, but after so long in power, how come there is scope for such seemingly large efficiency savings? What have they been doing for the last 12 years?

What have the Civil Service and Local Government got to do with efficiency ? Caledonian Comment

The current generation of Politicians, Civil Servants and Local Authorities have never demonstrated that they have the political will, experise or mechanisms to make real verified and immediate bottom line savings to our finances and until they do so we should ignore all this PR bluster about efficiencies.
They have grown up in a year on year spend increase culture and it looks like they don't have the bottle to do the tough stuff so they are going to need the pressure from the ballot box to make them do it.

29. At 3:31pm on 07 Dec 2009, geofffromleeds wrote:
'Call me old fashioned, but after so long in power, how come there is scope for such seemingly large efficiency savings? What have they been doing for the last 12 years?'

Good question..................... I don't know.

Manifestly there is this enormous dept problem and this has clearly got to be resolved in the medium term, but lets remember that the economy is not yet out of recession and most of the european economies which are have recovered by means of strong public sector expenditure i.e., dept. Any credible plan for dept reduction on the scale that will be necessary has got to take into account, to use a phrase of Christine Lagarde's how "one tiptoes away" from support - i.e., where the economy is sufficiently robust to stand on its own. We are some way away from there yet.

There is only one way to reduce government expenditure and that is to reduce the size of the state itself. Otherwise it is just smoke and mirrors produced by budget committees.

How much central state do we really need? Borders, military, courts of law, legislature and a small team to keep the books and sign cheques. The rest can be funded locally.

Ms Flanders, I do like boring actually and agree. That would persuade me more than.......
Well, I was listening to one alleged promiser of "pie in the sky before you die" on my TV screen - when instead of falling into a coma - with the memory of the otter and the 2012 Olympics in the South East England - I started thinking apropos nothing else in particular - "Why stop there?" The otter in greater numbers I mean. It is not there - amongst "heraldry" images. The otter. Not with beavers, dragons, lions, fox(one who will use all that he may possess of sagacity, wit or wisdom in his own defense? - nah I get nowt!) and doves!
Hello! Here is a tiger. Dangerous when roused people. lol
I mentally drafted this election promise listening to promiser of pie to Pi - "When Great Britain votes my views into Government - I fully intend to re-introduce the Unicorn into the country. We have been the poorer since it was found to be no longer a native of these shores" - allegedly.
Hmm. The bee is there? Well governed Industry? Effient perhaops? Ok but who knew? The bee was there I mean.
Subject: a time for inspiration
Anagram: saint reformation - I Pi

Every government IT project and most consultancy requires 10 tonnes of business case to show how they will payback the investment. So by cancelling IT projects and consultancy, is this not in fact going to cost more money in the long term?

If not, then the original business cases (presumably signed off at ministerial level for NHS IT) weren't worth the (considerable) paper they were printed on.

One should remember that the current group of electeds sat around and did nothing when warned in 2001 of the coming financial collapse. When it occurred they could not find anyone responsible and kept those incharge who created the problem (this also includes them). Good luck with an honest response or anything that would be defenseable. Also, it is good to remember that they really don't care what you think, only what you will forget.

Yet more uncritical coverage from the BBC. No surprise there.

As a public body the BBC shouldn't have a political bias. That results in plodding articles such as this.

'We all believe the savings are there to be had. We just don't trust the government to find them. '

No. We don't trust a government that has failed to recognise or address this problem over the last 12 years. In fact, we realise this government doesn't want to address this problem, because it goes against their tax and spend principles.

You suggest it is 'government' we don't trust, but that is rubbish. The government I don't trust is the one that has proved inept at dealing with the problems you describe for the last 12 years. 12 years!

Lets talk figures here. How many billion, or what is the range, the govt has to decrease total spending by for 2010-11.

I've heard figures from £40-150 billion mentioned.

Assuming each direct or indirect employee of the state earns 27k pa and would get benefits from being unemployed (including the cost of processing) of 7k pa. £100 billion of cuts would mean 5 million losing their jobs and about 2 million others going because of the lower spending.

Today 21 million are working full time and 7.5 million part time. If we lose 7 million full time thats only 14 million working full time. Thats 1/3 of all current full time workers being made unemployed.

Or put another way, (assuming part time workers support themselves and suffer the same % unemployment as the full timers) Over the next 18 months full time workers will go from supporting themselves and 1.5 others to themselves and 3 others.

We're in to feed back loops here involving falling consumer spending, rising unemployment, rising taxes, falling GDP, falling house prices, rising mortgage defaults, further bank bailouts, rising corporate bankruptcies.

Obviously the markets haven't thought this through. These are depression type figures.

I am a recently retired permanent civil servant (accountant by profession) and in my direct experience consultants are not being used as they should - very expensive (say at a minimum double the cost of an equivalent civil servant - but can be four times or more the cost) and LITTLE OR NO transfer of skills to permanent civil servants. Also no "commitment" or buy in to the ongoing role or need. Moreover, often used as a short term fix to buy time for less than fully competent higher management (although top management in civil service is actually generally good - but constrained by the system). Also long term contracts exist in practice albeit with the rules wriggled around to provide a facade of short term contracts. Long term consultants are largely a huge waste of resources. New permanent civil servants can also have major shortcomings - often talented but inexperienced kids great on spreadsheets but with very real lack of experience and insight. And experienced dedicated longer term career civil servants consequently somewhat disillusioned, exacerbated by hostile press etc - without a decent and dedicated civil service where would this country be?.

Thank You Stephanie. That, if I may so so, is more like it.

Public spending in the past few years has been built on the sand of the bankers 'mark to market' profits and now reform is vital.

Realism is needed, along with genuine reform. If that means the NHS goes for any above a certain wealth then I will back it if, and only if, the reform in the banking system and in the public sector is genuine.

I am sure most all public sector workers feel they are worth every penny they get and I am also sure that many are but when I hear the stories of the poor management, the flexi-time, the expenses, the bureaucracy and the attitude of many of them I have to say that I resent paying my taxes.

I fear that the intention to reform as presented today is not genuine and I think the tone of your piece is quite right.

21. At 2:45pm on 07 Dec 2009, jonearle wrote:
#15 MrTweedy - Return on Investment.

Although its hard to always work out a return on investment, many in the public sector do not think this way at all. In fact, you can see the culture of managers who have money allocated to a budget that is "mine to spend", and must be spent even if not really needed.

I remember seeing the first evidence of the current attitude to waste by this government about 8-9 years ago at my children's junior school. Every classroom was fitted out with expensive ceiling mounted projectors and electronic white-boards. Being a bit of a technology nerd I was interested to see how they were used. And surprise, surprise, over the 3 years my children were at the school all this technology was left idle, apart from literally the odd occasion when "a" teacher used a projector.

The fact that my children were more IT literate than their teachers, even at 7 years old, is no excuse to waste money on throwing technology at un-trained teachers an naively thinking you are improving teaching.

I bet we could fill these blogs with real stories of how our taxes have been wasted.


-----------
At our local school white board was useless when the over head projector broke, that was September, currently they are using Flip Charts, as they have no 'old fashioned' white board, or even the more old fashioned blackboard, Funny, I never remember having a blackboard failure, although I sometimes had to nick chalk from the next classroom.

One of the main structural problems with the public finances is the amount of money that is all ready committed. Over the past ten years there has been a massive amount of capital spend that has been financed through PFI/PPP deals and is therefore off balance sheet. In other words all the new schools, hospitals, etc that have been built have not been paid for and we are committed to leasing them for years to come. This is the real economic miracle of the past decade, the government found a new and even more expensive way to borrow money and has managed to keep it hidden (mainly because it beyond the wit of most journals).
Couple the dodgy financing with the amount of interest that is committed to pay for the massive level of government borrowing and you start to realise that our finance problems are much, much deeper than a saving of £13bn over three years represents.
If you really want to get depressed you then have to look at the destruction of the wealth producing part of the economy, the beleaguer private sector, again much masked the growth in our economy that presaged the recent slump was all in the public sector. The private sector has been in decline for decades though this vastly accelerated under the Labour government. The remarkable lack of unemployment in the current recession is all due to the fact that the majority of people are now employed directly or indirectly by the public sector and consequently reality has not struck yet.
So is there any good news? Well in the infamous words of Private Fraser “We are all doomed”.

34 stanilic

Well said.

Why do we need all these expensive, unnecessary and inefficient government departments.

Like you say, all we need is the military, the rest we can do for ourselves.

Poor families 'lack emotional support not just cash'

let's look at this a bit more closely shall we? Why am I afraid to go and spend money up the road in the local tamil community. I spend at least £5000 a year in their shops and they treat me with nothng but hostility.

I do not care about 'friends' what I want and expect when I am customer in a shop is 'courtesy'. here is the money here is the change thank you very much. That is difficult is it?

Why am I fighting this battle? They treat my every request for the service I am paying for as a hostile act!

FInE! if you don't want customers in your shop if you think I am doing things to you if you think i'm about to punch you in the head then I won't come in your shop any more.

I don't wan't to be called 'boss' i don't want anything except a bar of chocolate! I'm sorry if you resent the fact that you are just a shopkeeper and don't like being there go away then! quit! leave! Hello goodbye is good enough for me!

but you do not even show courtesy only violence and threats. you always blame other one and say other one is blaming you. Well i'm a customer spending money what more do you want?

Rule Number 1

"No public sector employeee shall be taken on at a salary higher than that of the prime minister"

..that should get things off to a good start.

At last Stephanie has given us an unbiased viewpoint on Mr Brown's Statement today.But why does he not clarify the cuts we all expect rather than try to make his statement into a party political broadcast!Savings in Whitehall are only the tip of the iceberg.
Give us the real facts and figures and treat the voters as intelligent people. Then we can make a clear choice when the Tories make their plans clear! Or is this all wishful thinking?

34 Stanilic
"The rest can be funded locally"

So 1700 people lose their jobs because a major employer closes down with major knock on effects. Local funding is reduced and some is even used for welfare. Schools become less well funded, operations get cancelled due to lack of funding. But everyone is happy because 'we're funding ourselves'. In neighbouring areas people fear an influx of those unfortunates, but they still feel good about themselves and think that as long as they are not affected who cares?

A shadow minister (this goes back years) says that one of their constituents was the victim of some awful mistake in hospital, so this shows that the government is failing its public. The only way to counter this is to collect figures to show that things are getting better. This employs more non frontline workers, so there are fewer workers doing the actual job and the situation improves very slowly (or gets worse due to lack of resources)

What I say is think before you put a proposal forward. Think of all angles and consequences and if you have answer which no one can pick holes in stand for parliament. Otherwise go up in your self inflating hot air balloon.

As for #44 "all we need is the military" - the way you see it you'll be needing them.

This is just party-political posturing.

The way to achieve the necessary savings is simple but pretty brutal.

1. Reduce all departmental recurring costs by 10%
2. Stop all index-linked and final salary civil service pensions.
3. Move departments out of London to north where its cheaper to live and
you'd get the voluntary redundancies on the way.
4. Make a 50% cut in travel costs for all uk-only departments - make
them use video conferencing, video telephone or simple phone calls or
the internet all for internal meetings
5. Stop wasting money on the NHS, assume that people actually DO DIE
eventually and stop keeping the "living dead" alive. Also stop
wasting money on counter-productive medical research which aims to
keep people alive longer in old age. Forget about infertility
treatment on NHS, gender change and single-sex wards. Concentrate on
fixing people's health with "what the army would do" in a war zone as
the starting point. Health tourists should be put back on plane
immediately condition discovered.
6. Prisons - use Cold Turkey for drug users, block mobile phone signals,
full body search of ALL offenders, visitors and prison officers
before and after prison visits by a rotating team from the army.
Make prison damned uncomfortable and spartan, no TV etc, no communal
areas,little inter-prisoner contact so they can't share secrets!
7. Scrap the Human rights act and the lawyers gravy train
8. Reduce council spending by making people responsible for where they
put their feet, stopping negligence claims, give small bonuses to
council chiefs for NOT spending all of their remaining allocated
budget on fatuous projects at the end of a year.
9. Bring all troops home from Germany and Iraq immediately
10. Stop all immigration - and with iot the need to finance massive
amounts of housing and welfare
11. RBS and LLoyds - sell off the non-retail parts, break up banks too
big to fail
12. Scrap all big centralised IT projects. They get so big that what
started out as a good idea ends up taking so long the originators
have forgotten what they asked for and it sno longer relevant
anyway. What should be done is to devise and publish database and
interface specifications. Off-the shelf suppliers can then tailor
their products to create / utilise data.
13. Simplify the tax system give everybody an NI number, photocard with
finger print and pay all benefits through it - no card no benefit.
Note I am NOT proposing an ID card system which should be scrapped
to save money.
14. Scrap foreign aid. Most of it is recurrent because the places like
Somalia have population growth like Zambian inflation - so Sir Bob's
efforts are a complete watse of time.
15. Stop vetting every man and his dog as if they were a paedophile and
stop all the unnecessary nanny-stating everywhere.
16. Stop ALL bebefits after 6 months unless you take one of three
job offers made by DWP - yes even Maccy Dees.
17. IMPROVE benefits for really disabled people who are incapacitated or
the blind but stop the work-shy claiming benefits

#48 Boilerbill

"So 1700 people lose their jobs because a major employer closes down with major knock on effects"

Because the government became involved. The steel industry in Teesside worked well in private hands, and everybody local was part of it. Nationalised British Steel was the beginning of the end.

"Schools become less well funded, operations get cancelled due to lack of funding."

Because the government became involved. If people took responsibility for their own education and health, then we wouldn't have the massive decline in education and health provision.

You might think that a government can run your life better than you can - I don't.

At 7:00pm on 07 Dec 2009, Clive of India wrote:

The way to achieve the necessary savings is simple but pretty brutal.


Gulp,
Clive of India are you for real? I thought people like you existed only in Horror Films or in my Nightmares.

Ever heard of thinking of your fellow man, or Compassion, or sharing. Clearly you will never need your fellow man.

'Starve the beast'

The more money you give to the public sector, the more it will spend.

If you cut the money, but stipulate the outputs that you want to be achieved as a result, local managers (who have the knowledge) will cut out the waste.

The Government is doing this with Network Rail under the 2008 Periodic Review, giving it efficiency targets. The rest of the public sector should be treated in the same way.

The government worker is like most other folks, wife, kids, house, etc. That individual doesn't set policy or participate in the contracts. The leadership sets the tone and blames everything on the workers. The attempts are to fix broken outdated equipment. The system in place is full of corruption and without changes the process will continue. The bank teller didn't steal your money, that was done in the board room. This is all aout the avoidance of accountability. They will do anything but admit that the bankers knew what would happen and planned the schemes that lead to the financial collapse and that the leadership of both parties were told in 2001 and did nothing. This is about ethical behavior in both the public and private sectors and neither is up to the task.

#29

They have been spending

So what Gordon Brown is saying is that HIS Government has been paying HIS staff too much of OUR money?

This bloke is a genius, someone make him prime minister.

70 pages!

Too much waffle, too late!!

With headings like 'we need smarter not smaller government'!!!

Its simple. A two line memo to all departments, services, local authorities, quangos or anyone else that spends tax payers money:

You are all to cut your overall budgets by 10%. How you manage this is your business but we do not expect to see a single vacant post advertised in the next year, consider base budgetting salaries and do not pay any bonuses.

Refer to the Stephanomics blog for plenty of suggestions for savings.

40 christopher malone:

'without a decent and dedicated civil service where would this country be?.'

Extraordinarily the entire British Empire was run with a tiny fraction of the Civil Service the country now has. Could you explain how this phenomenon occurred?

The main reason that 'efficiency savings' never materialise is that those who seek them have never run anything, and can't do so. In consequence they don't have the least understanding of the actual mechanisms of bureaucracy and in consequence haven't a clue about the costs of the disruption of transition from one 'less' efficient system to another 'more' efficient system. This is one of the many massive issues with the way we run our senior civil service and why many of them need sacking.

As an example: Tony Blair 'the NHS system will be implemented in 2 years' (10 years ago) He like all politicians on all sides of the house and their senior mandarins haven't a clue. Neither (most damagingly) will they take advice from those that know. (I am in the midst of an ongoing row with Stephen Timms of HM Treasury about iXBRL - if you don't know - don't ask! - but it is the next and most predictable admin. disaster.)

We all know what ends up happening is they simply cut jobs and luckly for Gordon Brown, he can blame that on the agencies and quangos. So we will see hosipitals facing debts and nursing cuts, police forces reducing numbers, etc. All the susposed productivy gains from badly run & specified IT projects never materialise. In IT world they should focus on open source and re-using sucessful solutions for other countries. They need to focus on investments that reduce long term costs and promote jobs and growth; such as renewable power projects like Severn barrage, reform the planning system to speed up wind, wave etc. Bring forward High speed rail links, and restore Glasgow airport link

It's "70 pages...", the work that goes into a press release, a highly organised gathering with security, transport expenses were no-doubt involved for all concerned and that's not to mention all of the time spent by UK journalists writing about it, us reading about it and now commenting on it.

This is just £3bn (that's THREE BILLION) of promissed savings in tax-payer money that's still apparently being wasted as I write this.

The story here is that this big fanfare is a complete waste of the time and money spent on it. Labour mangement in a nutshell? The current government needs to stop talking and get to finish the "doing" then publicise the tangible results.

Government debt of the United Kingdom :
https://cluaran.free.fr/debt.html
:-(

Funny how almost none of the savings amount to cuts in the permanent headcount! In the absence of commitments to cut headcount, none of these efficiency savings can be taken seriously. Why? Because all other areas of current (rather than capital) spending (other than benefits distributed) are marginal. The single largest line item (by far) in any Department's budget is staff costs and so you can't get much efficiency saving without cutting staff costs.

Is there potential to cut staff costs? Yes, masses of it - which could be achieved without any measurable impact on output. But you don't get turkeys voting for Christmas and ministers are reliant on the turkeys telling them where the savings are. And in any organisation, reorganising well is extremely difficult and painful. So don't hold your breath.

A typical, vague, policy proposal that can be put forward by politicians relying on a wing and a prayer whilst keeping the media and the public occupied debating said pointless proposal. Hasnt anyone noticed the pattern of this administration by now ?? Hopefully the economy heals itself in the meantime and proposer can claim credit seems to be the intention or else debate why it didnt happen and move onto more pointless initiatives.

The reason we can't trust Brown to find the savings is because he was responsible for the waste in the first place.

Years of government interference, micro management, targets, never-ending streams of new initiatives and multi-layered management structures have all added to the bloated bureaucracy.

GB plc should be as quick and sleek as a dolphin, but under Brown has become a beached whale.

Don't let's overlook the fact that bunglers like NuLab will incur a huge cost just making the changes to achieve these savings.

No, I don't trust the government. Apparently by terminating contracts on all consultants they'll save £600,000,000. I mean, consultants are self-serving and self-perpetuating. Any consultants worth their salt know that they must make a 3-week job spin out to a year or more once they get their claws in. But how on earth can any outfit accumulate £600,000,000's worth of consultants without realising something is wrong?

So I hold out no hopes for real, actual savings. The cost of making the savings will take up the first couple of year's savings if not more.

All I know is that Gordon Brown should really be dealt with over allowing the amount of inefficiency and mendicant IT systems to run riot for so long.

Did anyone see that big globe thing at Copenhagen? Bet that took a quite considerable amount of energy to run. I would have liked the conference to have taken place in the near dark with only candle light. Not that i'm a climate freak but all that usually happens is a load of figureheads get together to discuss climate cahnge (wasting energy all the while) whilst little or no agreement is met. Or the U.S can come out and say 'we're committed to cut greenhouse gases to a reasonable extent' - what does that mean? Either way i'll believe it when i see it

Seeing as we are still in recession, should your main point not be that we have not yet reached the right time to cut spending, rather than worrying about the details of how to do it?

How can that man, after 12 years in power, most as chancellor, stand up and say that we need to tackle a culture of excess in the public sector without one journalist asking the obvious question?

If we act like fools they will treat us as such

"Other Peoples Money" is never spent carefully or efficiently. There is no incentive to travel by tube when a taxi is available,there is no incentive to travel second class rather than first to save money.
The answer is to go back to small government where people get to spend their own money,rather than allowing some third rate minister to spend it on a pet project that makes them look good in the media.
If we must spend someone elses money, lets spend via local government close to the people it was taken from so that they can see if it is being spent wisely and complain if it is not.
This is a basic truth that will never change because, if I spend my money, I take care to get good value for it as I have had to go to work to get it.If I spend someone elses convenience and image triumph over value

Dear Stephanie,

Rather than looking at the minutiae of economic policy (which is probably subject to random chaos, and therefore as informative as tea leaves) what is the big picture?

Solving the economic crisis of the 1970's involved discovering oil and gas under the North Sea which has stood us in good stead for some time. Recently, financial services are said to have permitted some of us a measure of prosperity.

What are we going to do now to pay our way as a nation? In other words is there any way to distinguish that proportion of GDP which is a net gain to the UK from outside, and the rest. Does the distinction matter? If not, why not (it'd seem to me that we are sort of paying ourselves by magic if UK PLC is not making a profit)?

Rather than me guessing (financial services (banks, insurance), pharma (GSK etc), chemicals (ICI etc), IT services, universities) what are the facts? Does anyone even know? Being peripherally involved in the last two on the list, I guess it isn't easy to discover the real situation: for example a lot of the real work in computing is still done in Manchester, though for marketing reasons the companies appear to be based in Silicon Valley.

Measuring and improving efficiency is so much harder in public services for several institutional reasons.
Critical to assessments of worthwhile 'savings' is improved productivity. Measuring that objectively is puzzling in all public services because there's no sales revenue to compare with either costs or alternatives. Moreover, public services are usually a monopoly supplier with near zero competitive elements.
Increased productivity usually doesn't lead to expansion as it usually does in commercial spheres. That's because a public service is limited to the defined scope of the service.
Instead, 'productivity' is often aligned in public sector workers experiences as meaning a shrinking workforce. Hence their resistance to productivity growths measured by numbers served, and their preference for turning efficiency into qualitative improvements instead. Which is what happened when the cash taps were opened for the NHS. Arguably, quality gains are just as productive in pay-back as gains in the numbers of patients treated. Certainly patients prefer to live on rather than die sooner.
Unfortunately changes in quality are so much harder to evaluate than numerical gains in output. We do know that cancer and heart treatments are much better quality nowadays and that school results are much better too in England & Wales. Much harder to say how much that's a measure of increased productivity. And, therefore, efficiency.
What we can compare is our overall spending on our public services with that of comparable countries. On healthcare the NHS puts us miles ahead in terms of converting % of GDP spent into overall health of our nation. Much more difficult to measure much else. Still, a drive for more efficient use of scarce resources is a welcome development that's been under-way for six or seven years now.

So in 2004 they aimed for 21bn but in 2009, when we really it, they're aiming for £3bn?

Shoot for the stars Gordon.

#58 John_from_Hendon

This is why iXBRL won't work (in the sense of being clear, useable and bug-free)

from the wiki thingy

While XBRL is an open data standard in terms of access to the equivalent of its 'source code', the governance structure of the XBRL consortium is significantly different from a model open source approach because of the barrier to participation that is created by requiring paid membership and a focus on transacting business at physical conferences and meetings. XBRL International requires its paying members to advocate its use, many XBRL conference attendees are vendors, and much of the published material makes claims for compatibility and standardization that have yet to be achieved.[2]

They take the 'open source' idea and make it proprietry thereby ruining the best thing going for it, 'many-eyes', a concept that irons out bugs and improves useability quickly and efficiently.

It will work to make XBRL International and its members (membership fees range from £100 to £5000 p/a) some money though.

UK Gov, just step away from the computer please before you do any more damage.

One thing we need to radically alter is Civil Servants working conditions. They have endless leave, sabbaticals, flexitime. Civil Servants have to be considered seriously for jobs advertised at their grade even if they have no relevant experience - So you get useless civil servants circulating, trying out jobs they have no experience to carry out. Any wonder why the government wastes money. This isn't a matter of billions saved here or there - a cultural paradigm shift is needed. As alluded to above, civil servants have no capacity to run eficiently as they know we will always pick up the bill - up until now that is.

The real problem is that, to most people, "saving" means "spending less". But with the government it means "we're spending the same if not more, but trust us, we're doing it more efficiently". If the spend actually came down by £3 billion there would be no argument.

Call me simple, but if you want to cut spend, don't you reduce the budget available for Government to spend? THEN you get departments needing to find where to make cuts and 'efficiencies'. It's the bottom line that counts - anything else is sophistry. And it throws into sharp relief where the cuts have come from; you spend your budget on front line services and supporting them - and cut everything else. I suspect it'd be surprising how, when push comes to shove, much can still be delivered.

I hold our Civil Service responsible for many of our problems - complacent, self-serving, 'jobs for the boys' and unthreatened by government changes. Every time the dust settles they're still there, inefficient, bureaucratic, top-heavy and frankly not very good. A lot of comments about how bad government is can be laid at this door, irrespective of which party you support. A lot of good ideas have been ruined by poor execution - yet we fail to transform our public bodies in the way business does constantly.

I haven't had time to scan all the postings, so I am sure this comment has already been made, but just in case it hasn't.

How can Brown have the bare faced cheek to attack the levels of public sector wages when he is their employer - using our money. How is it that salaries have been permitted to rise to this unacceptable level under a Labour government, in which has has held high office through 100% of its time in office?

I thought looking for minorities to blame was the job of the BNP, but it seems that is not so; Etonians last week, public sector managers this week, who's next week's fall guy for desperate Gordon?

There are basically only four types of saving:

1. Paying less for staff: Employ fewer people and/or pay the ones you've got less. You take into account the fact you'll need to pay redundancy, social security benefits and the fact the newly out of work people will pay less tax and incur less VAT to work out the net saving. Having less staff means doing less - which is fine if the public are happy with fewer services or if those people lost weren't doing anything of value in the first place.

2. Not spend on buying stuff like missiles, warships, fighter planes, computer systems, etc: Work out the net savings by taking into account the lower profits of the companies you would have asked to do the work and the lower taxes paid by their (now smaller) workforces and the social security benefits these now unemployed people will require.

3. Deliver lower benefits like pensions, tax credits and social security.

4. Sell stuff: Like land, buildings, airwaves, or the right to run government services (factoring back in the net present value of the services you buy back).

I will believe promises made for any of the above. But it will need big ticket savings in all of the above to make a real difference to the deficit. If it's measured in less than hundreds of millions, I'll disregard it.

There is a fifth way to "save" money. It's called creative accounting. Companies and governments do it all the time. These are never real savings.

I do believe that the scale of this financial black hole has either not dawned on the politicians/civil servants or they are lying to us. Our indebtedness is of biblical proportions a little cutting here and there will not make a scrap of difference, there is a requirement for truly savage, brutal, vicious vindictive cuts on a scale never seen before in this country - Talk of saving front line services are out and out lies.
We have gone from 4th to 7th in economic league tables and possibly may soon be out of the top ten.
We are in very very real danger of having our triple AAA rating removed and not being able to borrow money, at all.
We are in very very real danger of attempting to borrow more money per year that we make in income - Is'nt that what got the sub prime people into a mess ??
If these are real savings, why have they not been implemented before, why was the public sector economy allowed to become so top heavy, part answer = to mop up unemployment thereby showing how great the country was doing.
The public sector pension deficit alone is more than enough to sink UK Ltd.
Why was there no money put by for a rainy day.
The simple fact is that we are clinging to a rock in the middle of the North Sea and our so called politicians/civil servants have sold us out by sheer grotesque incompetance, stupidity and greed.
Watch this space - abject misery and poverty is coming to country near you very soon - be afraid very afraid.

They should've hired Fred the Shred to make the cuts!

JOIN THE DOTS UP...

THE PRINCIPAL REASON WE ARE IN THIS FISCAL MESS IS THE MASSIVE INCREASE IN PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYMENT. THE GROWTH OF NON-JOBS (AND THEIR OPEN ENDED, UNFUNDED PENSION LIABILITIES) OVER THE LAST 12 YEARS IS STAGGERING.

THIS IS THE UNDERLYING CAUSE OF THE BUDGET PROBLEM, NOT AS THE GOVERNMENT WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE, THE BANK BAILOUT. ONCE AGAIN LABOUR HAS BLOWN THE BUDGET.

As soon as they make cuts in one area they will be squandering those savings, and more, somewhere else. They will crow about the savings and keep the profligacy hidden.

Yaaaaaawwwwwwwnnnnn.

I'm afraid the tough medicine of Clive of India (49) and others are necessary; and the longer we delay, the worse our future will be.
Regards the NHS, there is no doubt that a job cull will be needed. It galls many of us that work there, that managers do not show any interest in learning about the area they manage. Most front-line staff would not recognise their managers in a police line-up. (That is not a joke.) Sadly, the modus operandi is to bring in 'outside experts' to tell them what to do. (They must know at heart that they no nothing of their area!) Usually, those experts practise 'conclusion-driven hypotheses' to get paid millions for telling the bosses a few tiers up the answers they assume they want. So, no involvement of the workers by anyone. Surprisingly, nothing then changes and reputed savings stay sat on similar 70-page reports as Stephanie describes.
In terms of saving hard cash, managers should be looking at how the private sector operates, e.g. in operating theatres in the NHS, there is an excess of staff but less efficiency. Those surplus to requirements sit around booking flights on the internet and selecting playlists on Spotify. Unfortunately, union strength and the L'Oreal philosophy ("We're worth it!") prevents attempts at changing working practices.
On an optimistic note, the current crisis gives us the opportunity for a radical overhaul of the psychological contract between British citizens and their government.
1) The free lunch is over. We can't afford the upkeep of those who withold their labour but dump on society a pack of children they can't support that need housing, education, etc. Ditto we can't provide free healthcare to anyone who fancies coming here for it. (I won't expand on this now but please visit a London hospital to witness the burden of overseas health tourists: the interpreting service cannot cope.)
2) The irresponsible spending of the past 12 years (remember Prudence, anyone or "borrowing to invest in the British people....!") should rightfully mark the death-nell of the Labour Party; and if society has a memory, they should NEVER be voted in again.
I hope the government doesn't cut policing budgets significantly though because it needs to prepare for some very ugly scenes on the streets soon.

Back in the 70's the accountancy firm I was training with used to second staff to a govt dept in London to help with administration.

The complicated process to be followed meant that a piece of paper entering the system on a Monday would come out the other end on the Friday.

The guys who were sent there were quick to work out that most of the steps in the process were completely unnecessary, usually because the same steps were being repeated two or three times, and they re-engineered the process such that it only took until Wednesday afternoon to finish. Consequently all the work was done super quick and they spent two and a half days each week twiddling their thumbs.

Well, all hell was let loose when it was discovered what they had done. Investigations followed but no-one could prove that the process or controls had been weakened by the more efficient process. However, the Govt dept didn't like the fact that the work could be done in half the time and with half the staff than previously was the case, and the old inefficient process was reintroduced.

I doubt if much has changed in the attitudes to Govt administration in the 30 odd years since....

79. At 11:47am on 08 Dec 2009, Glanwy wrote:
'We are in very very real danger of having our triple AAA rating removed and not being able to borrow money, at all'.

As regards the UK’s AAA rating:

The first is A is given because you pay back the capital.
The second A is given because you honour the interest payments
The third A is given because you don’t water down the value of the gilt by printing more money.

The third ‘A’ is likely long gone but not admitted to.

There is only one real measure of government speanding efficiency, how much of the national economy it represents. That is the real hard measure that has to be "squeezed until their pips hurt". Anything else is subject to some sort of spin.

No one should trust any government on spending money.

Concultancy is an interesting example. I should imagine the typical government and public sector (including NHS) consultant is being paid £400+ a day (that is based on what I have seen on job advert sites). This is a very high figure, but it justified in a number of ways by the government department; savings made and value created is one, another is the market rate. As we have already said the savings made arguement is subject to interpretation. However, surely the market rate is objective? Well no: the government agency can set barriers to entry to new participants in the market, thus driving up the rate. This is done by claiming that the consultant must have government department experience; and requires a substantial amount of "paper qualifications". These barriers, to a certain extent, favour ex-public sector workers; so keeping the jobs with the boys. But most importantly, they limit the number of possible consultants that will be employed. Result, a high market rate.

In the end, the only way to know that government has spent less, is to look at the total numbers, and the Labour government for the last 11+ years has only moved that number in one direction.

#79 Glanwy... Watch this space - abject misery and poverty is coming to country near you very soon - be afraid very afraid.

What I find incredible is how professionals in the media are not reporting with absolute incredulity about how pathetic all the announced measures are, by both the government and the opposition.

We are currently borrowing an extra £15 billion or so every month. And Gordon has the nerve to announce trifling "few billion" improvements "per year". Nothing announced comes close to reversing the level of extra on-going borrowing, let alone reducing the total.

The more I understand, the more I feel broken hearted that we have been bankrupted as a nation. As even the gloomy borrowing level does not show the billions committed to future PFI payments and massive unfunded pensions.

As a reseller of products imported from Europe and paid for in Euros, I am extremely concerned that next year we are likely to have a crippling fall of pound to Euro that will wipe out my ability to make any money. I will be amazed if by this time next year we have not been forced by the IMF and the German government to adopt the Euro on condition for the billions needed to bail us out. And it will be done at such speed and unfavourable terms that we will all be wrecked by it.

However, on the bright side, at least its unlikely that the government will do what they just did in N. Korea.

Will Mr Darling have anything radical to say tomorrow to alieve these fears?

#73. BobRocket wrote: "...iXBRL won't work..."

Bob, I am in complete agreement with you...

Unfortunately, as you probably know, but just in case others do not...

As of years ending after 30/3/10 all company accounts and tax returns submitted to HMRC MUST be submitted as iXBRL (invisibly embedded in html documents) and CANNOT be submitted on paper. This applies to all UK companies no matter how small.

The Treasury Minister Stephen Timms has personally written to me stating that the 'system' is fully tested - he obviously does not understand the first thing about testing any 'system' as the system's definitions (taxonomy) are incomplete and the 'system' requires third party software to work faultlessly with the Revenues systems - idiocy in the extreme.... Neither he nor his civil servants in the Treasury are 'fit for purpose'!

To David post 86),
Please don't fall into the trap of confusing medical consultants with public sector consultancy, the importing of outside profiteering 'experts.' The former are ignored and sidelined by healthcare management. However, it suits the agenda of politicians and leftist media for the public to confuse the two. Medical consultants no longer have any power within the NHS to effect change, by the way. Also on pay, the figure you give is more than I earn, having been qualified almost 20 years; and considerably less than that charged by the big companies favoured by the government.

The politicians and media hype aganst bankers is an out & out smoke screen, why the media is not highlighting the desperate plight the UK is in, is beyond me.

The politicians and civil servants have been shown to be incompetant, they our emporers with no clothes and the media is failing us, their customers, in not being more forthright in their attacks on this cowardly spin culture.

This country has no money, not may be, not should be able to find some - we have no money, full stop. If we were a company director or an individual we would be behind bars.

We have no income, there is no oil/gas left, our banks are bust, we have no software giants, no car/aircraft giants - precisly what are we going make/sell to generate an income. Health & Safety laws?, Environmental laws?, Government statistics?, our MP's? - I wish.

Just reading these comments alone leads me to believe that any little residue of trust that politicians/civil servants had with the people of this country has been broken. We live in age where civil servants and politicians are in it for what they can get out of the system and the rest of us low life's can sink without trace, they really don't care.

The Economist Magazine said of Gordon Brown very soon after became PM - Gordon Brown likes big government providing it's his big government. Well he got his (very) big government and the rest of us (our children and our children's chidren) got shafted, and I doubt Gordon Brown and his cronies and whitehall mandarins will go short.

The spotlight is on the government and it's quango's. Any unnecessary non essential costs must be cut for the greater good of the UK Economy.
Call it collateral damage if you want but any wishy washy jobs for the boys must go. Any wishy washy benefits to illegal immigrants must stop, people on state benefits must be made to contribute something in labour or other skills.
We are still borrowing to spend and as Michael Heseltine said once 'to borrow to invest is the road to success, to borrow to spend is the beginning of the end'.
If Labour or the next government try to be clever with words they will be quickly found out and lose yet more trust and respect.
A word of warning. We still have freedom of speech to express our views and should be grateful for that. Many less tolerant societies would have culled their detractors a long time ago.

Stephanie you are missing the point that there are huge spending cuts happening in the form of postponed capital projects and an abandonment of PFI projects.Most of these have not been publicly announced but they are happening and some are now known, eg the abandonment of the Glasgow Airport rail link,the rejection of new cost-rent aplications for new GP surgeries,and the abandonment of all things Darzi when his new health centres were found to be five times dearer than existing GP services.
Also a huge swathe of time-expired projects and initiatives are disappearing,and big cuts are being made by organisations outwith the government's control and therefore not arising anti-government outcries.
An interesting way to do it would be to look at Public sector recruitment in say the Guardian this year versus last year,and public sector marketing budgets, and you will see that there has been a big,big drop.
It is happening already.

There is one way we could reduce govt spending by the scale we need. Impose a 4 day week for 4 days pay across direct and indirect govt employees.
It may seem harsh but it's kinder and cheaper than throwing millions of them on the dole. I'd rather take 4 days work for 4 days pay than no work and a life on £50 a week unemployment benefit.
We'd need to tie it up with a restriction on the interest banks can charge for retail loans and mortgages. The banks won't like it but so what, without us they'd all have collapsed anyway.

As so often happens efficiency savings are confused with cuts. An efficiency saving occurs when the service is not affected but the cost is reduced. Easy targets like consultancy can fit into both categories. Stopping consultancy may impact the capacity to deliver a project or programme. Rather than unthinking ideas like cutting by 50% might it not be better to say something like stop wasting money on consultancy or using consultancy appropriately (might reduce consultancy by 60%!) Oh yes, I know why its not said like that - its a junk soundbite

A point most of you have missed, Stephanie included, is that the government uses the public sector as a means of soaking up some of the unemployed to improve the figures. Why otherwise would they not have simplified the rules on things like benefits, taxation and national insurance - it is to employ lots of extra people needed to administer these unnecessarily complicated regulations.

Why, you may ask, don't they encourage these people to get jobs in the private sector? It may be that these products of the education system simply don't have the level of skills needed to turn a profit in the private sector, but in the public sector, that doesn't matter.

So, by making savings in the public sector, all you are doing is increasing unemployment, perhaps to the point at which social cohesion is prejudiced.

The real answer (apart from I wouldn't start from here if I were you) is to give much more emphasis to science - real science, not learning how to surf the net on an iphone - and engineering apprenticeships, to give real on-the-job experience.

To have any chance of success in the future we have to compete with the 1000's of well trained graduates in South Korea, Taiwan, etc.

Our only other chance of success is to find a way of selling being kool on the dole to other countries.

The solution is simple and stares us in the face ,reduce ALL public sector wages [including banksters ] and farewell benefits accross the board by 25%.Thus reducing imports and maintaining emloyment.

Its going to happen anyway...the hard way

It is almost impossibel to say whether money is being spent "better", because no-one can define what "better" is.
Take the NHS... if you reduced nurses' wages, then does that count as spending money "better" because you get more nurses per pound?

#70

That's it - you have the solution. We need to discover oil or gas again - what about the Falklands (don't laugh there are some resources there) or Antarctica (it was split up when we were a big player so we have a chunk of this). Then we can squander it over the next twenty or thirty years. Err - that'll be long enough for me.

Hopefully when the Tories get in next year they'll publish the truth about how much the country is in debt. That will force interest rates back to where they should be - around 6% or so - bringing debt back under control.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Anyone who has worked in the public sector with a halfway critical eye will see where savings can be made. I've seen such terrifying examples of what can only be called waste it's just unbelievable. Furniture ordered and almost immediately thrown away (not sent back for a refund or exchange, literally piled into a skip) because it didn't meet new guidelines. I've worked for a company that bid on a government contract - our bills for the work we did to get to the final selection stage ran well over a quarter of a million (so presumably the other bidders billed similar amounts) only for the project to be canned.

Then there's the known wastage in the benefits system. It's painfully obvious that a lot of people genuinely need public support to live. It's also painfully obvious that a lot of people choose a life on benefits because it's easier than working for a living. No civilised society should penalise the first group but at the same time we can't afford to tolerate the second group. So we need to simultaneously ruthlessly cut benefits for the workshy and give more to those in genuine need.

So much of what the government has done with the tax system simply makes it more complex. That in turn makes it more expensive to administer, creates more places where people can make genuine mistakes, and creates more places where clever accountants can hide cashflows. So we need to massively simplify the tax and benefits system - the most obvious way has been suggested many times and that's to scrap tax credits and hike the personal allowance. At a stroke tax is easier to manage, compliance is easier, there's less scope for mistakes and creative accounting, and we can lose an army of pen-pushers at HMRC.

The trouble is that all these things are over-ridden by the political element. What Labour government is going to throw lots of public sector workers (who traditionally vote Labour) out of work in the runup to an election? It's the kind of thing the Tories can do safely because they won't be losing votes over it, but Labour won't want to make their inevitable destruction at the polls even more crushing than it's already going to be.