It seems certain that this week’s political news agenda will be dominated by rows over the highly controversial future of higher education funding, and in the week before the spending review it could well serve to be a mere preview of what’s to come. It would be tempting, therefore, to assume that there will be nothing but bad news for the government in the coming weeks.
But today saw the release of a report that will bring much more pleasant music to the ears of ministers than tomorrow’s publication by Lord Browne – and therefore unsurprisingly will grab far fewer headlines. But it could also bring some small comfort to thousands of public-sector workers facing a pay freeze and higher pension contributions – not to mention the dreaded CSR.
Sir Philip Green, the British billionaire retail tycoon best known as the boss of clothing stores like Topshop, claims to have uncovered staggering amounts of wasted government expenditure that he says would run even his own successful businesses to the brink of ruin.
Cynics, of course, might say this is rich coming from a man who is notorious for his own ‘staggering’ unpaid tax bill.
His core finding is that the decentralised and fragmented approach to various forms of government procurement – including, dare I say it, expenses – sends unnecessary costs spiralling, with no coherent reporting and no accountability. By changing the civil service’s approach – and attitude – to day-to-day expenditure, Sir Philip says, billions could be saved before resorting to redundancies.
Needless to say, the government has leapt on the report as evidence that it is possible to maintain its assault on the deficit whilst protecting that old chestnut, “frontline services”. Others have gone further, using the report as a stimulus for attacking the civil service, its lack of accountability and the performance-unrelated pay of senior staff.
But we’ve heard all this before, right?
Only to the extent that we’ve heard governments talk about improving their budget prudence – that is to say, never quite this explicitly, consistently or aggressively as what we are currently witnessing.
Sir Philip’s report finds broad trends, carries thoughtful messages and makes high-level criticisms and recommendations, but it is also grounded in tangible, accessible examples of waste – rather in the same way that the Daily Telegraph turned widely-acknowledged sleaze and shadiness in Westminster into stories of second homes, duck houses and moats.
And he’s not lying. Your correspondent’s personal and anecdotal experience is that those in the public sector for whom travel and accommodation expenses represent a substantial (and opaque) substitute for higher salaries are appallingly blasé in their attitude to these perks. But the real problem is systemic – there is no meaningful oversight of this massive, routine expenditure; no analysis of need or justification, and certainly no long-term vision of what can be done, what radical reforming steps can and should be taken, to stem the flow.
It was following the Lyons review of 2004 that the government embarked on a programme of civil-service decentralisation, shifting thousands of public-sector jobs away from London and the South East. This dispersal from the congested traditional home of government is often seen as being mainly about sharing the benefits of public-sector employment around the country as well as easing the burden on London’s infrastructure and housing market.
However, finance was an equally prime motivation – because the costs of living and working elsewhere in the country are lower, civil servants here could enjoy the same ‘utility’ as their London counterparts at less cost to the state.
But the haphazard way in which scores of government departments and agencies have been scattered across the country has resulted in related organisations being so isolated from each other (and, initially at least, bereft of the necessary communication networks), as to have created a whole new burden – and culture – of inefficiency that was apparently unforeseen.
Back then, decentralisation was the fashion. Now the king of the high street is telling us that times have changed.
The government has its sights set on a 5-year horizon in its mission to slash the deficit and reduce Britain’s burden of debt. But – much like finding the right solution to funding the education of tomorrow’s civil servants – it is this sort of long-term thinking about how much public money they spend that is necessary for a sustainable future.
If only Mr Green would make his own contribution.
What is your point?
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