Tony Devenish

6 steps to out-fox local government’s Sir Humphreys

Shortly after the 2010 general election I attended an event where mandarins complained of ‘swingeing cuts’. Then one NHS boss admitted that he had so much cash sloshing around he was having trouble spending his multi-hundred million budget. Local government, which accounts for one quarter of government spending, has the same mindset.

Despite the rhetoric of cuts, little has actually changed. I have watched Sir Humphrey Whitehall and local government (both as a private contractor and as a councillor), and each year we witness a rush before the financial year ends to spend money which, if cuts were actually deep, would not exist. Fraser Nelson spelt out this reality before the budget. Public spending increased by sixty per cent during the last government. Since 2010 spending has been cut by just three per cent. Sir Humphrey sits on the sideline like a Wimbledon umpire while each side calls for tax hikes or welfare cuts. Here are my six recommendations to restrain Leviathan, broadly in line with existing coalition government policies.

1). All new public sector appointments on salaries of £60,000 and above should be fixed term contracts of three years or less. This would end the ‘job for life’ mentality, which is central to the way taxpayer’s money is spent. There is not sufficient pressure to make budgets more efficient. This is not an attack on the public sector – I have huge respect for many of the people I work with – but many believe their budgets should be spent in full.

2). The Home Office recently revised police officers’ starting salary, dropping it by thousands of pounds. And even the London Borough of Islington advertised a chief executive salary at tens of thousands of pounds less than the previous incumbent.

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