The Cameroons are fleshing out the agenda which may come to define them

Publius

"This is, as James says, a radical bit of policy."

Gosh! I'm shivering with anticipation. This really is something that will be written in the stars.

AndyinBrum

Stop whining P, it's a detailed policy that might well be very good for government

JohnPage

It's a re-announcement. What was it called when Stephen Byers regularly did this sort of thing?

Rhoda Klapp

Yawn. Look out for £24999 contracts duplicated ad infinitum.

I thought the tory agenda was keep a clique in charge, don't let anybody else get a look in, drop inappropriate candidates on constituencies whose membership you despise and keep shtum about anything the electorate actually is concerned about. Am I mistaken?

AAE

What's the betting that the Civil Service will become quickly adept at breaking down expenditure into unit costs of £24,999.99! Government spending has doubled in less than 10 years and we know that much of that is for political structures that are an economic drain. Being able to see on the internet how the money is spent on any useless quango you care to name won't quell my anger that it is being spent at all. He'll have to do better than this.

AAE

Ah Rhoda - you were there before me!!

se1man

Will they include (i) all contracts of employment, and (ii) contracts not just of central Govt but also of local councils?

Cato

Where Thatcher recovered the Falklands, faced down the miners, and pruned down the state, Cameron published government contracts online. A little fascetious, perhaps, but still a valid contrast.

Dominic

If you look after the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves...

Verity

Rhoda K - A masterly summing up, if I may say so.

strapworld

I don't suppose that contained in this most exciting speech will be any reference to Neather and Migrationwatch and the disgraceful behaviour of Blair,Brown and this shower of Labour Party traitors.

Chris lancashire

I, for one, welcome some positive detailed policy which makes a lot of sense.
If this policy had been in place over the last 10 years we wouldn't be saddled with so many IT disasters.

stephen

Sounds like another Boy George inspired bit of gesture politics! If the Tories get into power they need to manage the Economy notreally on cranky whistle blowers

country mouse

It's a good start. The sad thing is that we are all so surprised to read it. This sort of thing should be standard Tory policy by now.

James

Just call it 'TED' like everyone else does!

Dita Parlow

What would be really interesting is if the cost of the project to be delivered is compared with the cost of procuring the contract in first place. That would show the waste that is built into the procurement process

TrevorsDen

Mr Hoskins, (et al) why not just publish a thread for people who just want to whine and moan and conspire to oversee the re-election of Brown.

Only policies that will totally alienate the great mass of voters will appeal to them.

J H Holloway

Interesting reactions from the red-meat crew.

If you lot actually used the internet to find out what was going on in government (rather than just chucking things at 'Dave'), policies like this would be godsend.

A couple of years ago I bothered to download the Supplemental Tolls bill that was already going through the Lords. A little bit of research (ie actually reading it) revealed that TFL and Ken Livingstone were equipping themselves with the power to toll all of the main road network in Greater London.

They also were going to equip themselves with a team of inspectors who could enter your car and 'check' the on-board tolling equipment. If you resisted TFL's militia, you could get six months inside.

It was only when I blogged this stuff on Guido and Dale, that the damned Tory peers realised it was bill too far...

What the Tories are offering is to open up government to those with an internet connection and a keen sense of duty.

Wouldn't it be nice to see Verity digging up dirt and exposing wrong-doing....

Naomi Muse

An addendum to say that if more than one contract is given to the same company adding up to more than 25k then they should be fully disclosed too, should fit the bill and stop the gap.

Rhoda - right on.

Ned Ludd

Tories face two monumental tasks first get elected, second dismantle Labour's hidden army in local government. 'Radical' they will have to be bloody revolutionary.

TGF UKIP

"This will ....... open up the procurement system to more small businesses" Bollocks!

This government, and Harmperson in particular, has attached so many gender, ethnic and other PC tendering barriers to public sector contracts that most small indigenous Brit businesses are effectively shut out.

Ultra metropolitan PC Dave has not and will not undertake to remove these barriers.

G Smith

There is merit in this but some real issues as well - see this for an informed expert opinion.
http://blog.procurement-excellence.com/?p=636

Dennis Churchill

The Conservatives need to end Labour’s use of “political Indicators” when awarding contracts. The makeup of a suppliers’ workforce etc should not be factors taken into consideration. Neither should it be of concern if we pay women employees more than men. The men are free to move to competitors if they are unhappy.
We have got used to a situation where we are constantly policed to ensure we conform to a particular set of political beliefs and objectives. The Conservatives should pretend they believe in individual liberty and accept, in a free country, we don’t all need to agree with current political dogma.

2trueblue

Whatever Cameron offers there are those who spend time looking for the holes. Maybe sometimes it is just what it is, a start.

Rhoda Klapp

Look, this may be a good plan in itself, but it is hinted that Cameron is a control freak inside the party, and that makes it reasonable to suspect that no power will be devolved to 'the people'.

The point made by others of the hoops you have to jump through to supply to government national or local is a good one.

I should remark that there has been an initiative to publish all contracts so that anyone may tender, under the present crowd. You can get it all via email, national or local. So at least you can find out about the things you could go for, even if you can't fill in the forms or meet the requirements without the aforementioned hoop-jumping.

Yes I hear you cry, plenty of firms successfully jump through the hoops, and cut and paste whole equality policies and H&S policies and all the rest in order to meet the requirements. It can be done. But why do you have to, for a small contract? Plenty of multi-national companies do not have any such requirements.

TomTom

Post-Bureaucracy ? Not a chance unless you repeal legislation back to the 1970s at a minimum. Thatcher, Major and Blair-Brown heaped bureaucracy onto the public and institutions.

Cameron should simply beware falling into the hole Merkel disappeared into such that her party acts like Social Democrats and entrenches the very mess the voters wanted changed

welshy

This election will not be won or lost on this stuff - so not sure I would get that excited about politics of it.

Greater transparency and accountability in contract making is clearly a good thing - and both parties would need it to deliver the promised land of "efficiency savings". You cannot overall save billions while wasting billions on penalty clauses / overruns (it nets off!!!).

Think of how much would have been saved by signing fixed price contracts, for example, in IT - transfer the risk onto the private sector, and if they won't do it, then maybe it is a numpty thing to take on!?

Less ego, more common sense from all sides please. (I would also try to have rules around pursuing new gimmick schemes in last 2 years of a parliament - so so wasteful when the next lot chuck them out!).

If we don't listen to the other sides arguments objectively - we will all get the style of govt we deserve (red or blue - but complacent and focused on 40000 swing voters).

michael

When a front page something sounds too good to be true, there is usually an alternative middle page agenda tucked neatly behind the next big story hmm.

John Ware

It's great to see Mr Cameron will bring an end to bureaucratic Government, now that he has brought an end to Punch and Judy politics and brought transparency and equal opportunities to the Conservative Party

JR

Some interesting comments however to add a dose of reality:

1. Contracting out of services creates another type and layer of beuracracy to enable tendering and montioring of these factors.
2. There has been huge recruitment of private sector recruitment specialists to the civil service to do this work.
3. Unfortunatly public sector procurement doesn't work very well anywhere (i've just got back from the States where its a hilarious mess in GOP and Dem run states and cities alike) because of scale, complexity and lack of price signals.
4. The level of quality control of services demanded by the public (e.g. exam marking) is enormously difficult to impliment without asking contractors to provide onerous performance data on a range of factors (or the state to employ even more people to monitor the situation).
5. Private companies simply will not accept the transfer of risk. The David Freud inspired Flexible New Deal is the classic example in this country (private companies accepted risk then demanded more money using the threat of pulling out of contracts during a recession and suing the Government instead of paying penalty fees) but I've seen many, many others in the US and Australia which are the only other comparable countries in terms of privatisation.

If people want to look at the Canada experience (as is fasionable) they mainly deliver their core public services (based around "Service Canada" and provinces delivery of welfare, health and education) through the public sector. They have very lax contracting (compared with Oz, us and US states) with the third sector for some welfare provision and its almost impossible to show value for money.

That is not to say things there aren't advances to be made or that everything should be taken back into the public sector - however the debate should recognise there are fundemental problems world wide with the public sector using procurement to deliver services.

David Parker

The publishing of these contracts may be a start, though only those with legal training would be able to fully evaluate the implications of the small print (which would doubtless be excluded).

More importantly, however, would be the ability to monitor the performance of these contracts and to include some provisions for the accountability of government officials responsible for their execution.

In any private organisation, if a major contract was over priced, over budget and over time, those responsible would be called to account or explain, and heads would probably roll.