Civil service discussing Tory efficiency savings

Fox in a box

Ah, but as she showed when sitting in for Toenails on his blog previously, Ms Kuenssberg tends not to follow the officially sanctioned BBC script...

charles hercock

Anyone working in public services will know the waste and Spanish practices which compensate for lower than average wages.Tell them to talk to the folk at the coalface

Dave B

I'm expecting lots of leaks from the Civil Service. I think they want a different government too.

Rainer Unsinn

If it had come from the Tories, it would have been spun into "Tory cuts in front line services".

Simon Stephenson

I wonder what makes me think that the media will portray this so as to conform to the popular mythology that the civil service is run at a sub-GCSE level where everything is dealt with reactively, and anticipation is recognised only as another word for sweat.

Wake up!

Those who have got to the top of the civil service are capable people. They wouldn't last 5 minutes unless they had already worked out broad answers to just about every conceivable question their political masters could ask them. The detailed planning and mechanics of how best to slim down public spending has already been done - it only awaits the political input to firm up the pace, scope, exemptions and focus.

Alun Reynolds

Those who have got to the top of the civil service are capable people.

Their capability extends only to obfuscation and avoidance of accountablility.

paulg

Mr Brown controls all the statistics & information at the treasury and, he has used it to frame his argument, but this argument is not about narrow accounting.

Studies have shown from places such as Canada that real savings by as much as 20% can be affected without impacting front line services. Moreover, conservative councils, up and down the land have been leading the way in cutting cost and maintaining services.

Mr Brown has created a bureaucracy and bureaucratic procedures that would be worth of Byzantine and still insists that the tax payers fund it.

Uri

It's what one expects from the civil service, they've no idea, totally clueless.

What are they doing meeting up to discuss high level proposals from the opposition prior to an election? They have no such right to be wasting public money on such nonsense. That they have the time to even contemplate such stupidities is sad, that they actually did it is symptomatic of why so many of them need to go and the rest be brought into the real world that the private sector is enduring outside of their public sector troughs.

Ken

@ pu hui
- must be a Labour Lister spammer, can't spell!

JohnAnt

Fresh from an NHS hospital appointment earlier today, I would say that five (possibly six) of the seven members of staff I interacted with for my simple 3 minute test could be dispensed with - at least in the clinic I attended - without noticing the loss. The seventh would then be unhindered by their chat from doing her job.

JR

Uri - What are you talking about? It's exactly the job of the civil service to be ready to impliment the policies of a new Government (of whatever party) from May 7th. Are you suggesting that Conservative or Labour Ministers should be greeted by civil servants who haven't considered their proposals (manifesto and otherwise) and don't have an established plan to impliment them?

Hawkeye

Civil service...... efficiency savings.....

Hmmm.....

Oxymorons anyone?

Charles

I know for a fact that the civil service are taking this very seriously. Someone I know well (non-civil servant) was approached because they are a specialist in a given field and asked for their views on how budgets could be cut by 25%.

Definitely a good idea that they are doing the leg work so that our next government can start implementing their plans immediately.

Uri

JR,

If it's their job then it's hardly newsworthy. I'd be surprised if the tory proposals are detailed enough to be serious candidates for implementation by the civil service yet.

Simon Stephenson

uri : 6.42pm

It's newsworthy, Uri, because millions of people think that nothing happens in the civil service unless it's been ordered by politicians. That civil sevants are like lawnmowers or copying machines - totally dormant and unproductive unless they are being driven or operated by politicians.

The fact that this is total nonsense doesn't deter the popular media from reporting events as though it is true. In this case, for example, the storyline is that there must be some sort of conspiracy between the civil service and the Conservative Party to prejudge the results of an election not due to take place for 4 weeks. This is complete twaddle - any competent administrator would wish to have plans pretty well made up contingent on the likely demands of whichever grouping formed the next government. Have no doubt that the civil service will also have detailed plans already prepared, designed to conform to the expected political demands of a Labour government, should we be halfwitted enough to elect one.