Oct 07 2007
The next spin - loads of money for public services
Whilst the media are dining out on great General Election fiasco, and using the Tory spin for a change, we need to be getting ready for the next great spin from the Brown message makers.
Attention will move to the Spending Review - CSR. I guess we will be told:
1. "Great economic management" will allow extra money for Education and Health
2. The Tories oppose "extra investment" in public services
What we wont be told is:
1. Local government will be expected to raise substantially more money through the Council Tax
2. How the money is going to be spent to achieve something worthwhile
The truth about Gordon Brown is that he does believe spending ??550 billion on public services is good, and that spending ??560 billion on them is better. He buys the loads of money fallacy. I have listened to his many Commons statements over the years, and heard the same in private conversations. He never once pauses in his speeches to ask how is the money going to be spent to achieve a better outcome, and never considers the possibility that spending less in some areas might produce less waste.
It is true that the news of a Conservative James Review, subsequently rubbished by the government, triggered the Gerschon Review which the government is struggling to implement. That found ??22 billion of waste each year in its own government spending! However, there is nothing in the statements made by the PM and government which imply it is embedded in their thinking that value for money matters or can be influenced positively.
When I decide to go to a shop or buy a product I do not seek to find out which shop or which supplying company has spent most and then go to that one. I have no idea of the relative overheads or total cost of most of the businesses I buy from. My interest is in the quality and attractiveness of the product - where I want the best I can find and afford - and the price - where I want the lowest for the quality I seek. If business A decided to slash its spending on bureaucracy and waste and started selling its products at cheaper prices I would buy from it, not complain about the "cuts"!
Most people think the same about public services. Most are not be impressed that Labour is spending much more on health than some previous government, or that it is now spending over ??100 billion a year on it. That, after all, just reminds them of the cost or price they the taxpayers are having to pay. The aim should not be to maximise the cost. People will be impressed if, needing high quality health care promptly that is what the local GP or hospital can supply.
The whole political debate in the UK is mesmerised by Labour’s loads of money fallacy. In the Commons if I or others urge discussion of "outcomes" - the results of the spending - rather than of the amounts public services cost, and remind colleagues that dearer is not always better, there is grudging agreement. The debate then rolls on about how wonderful it is that this government has managed to increase the costs of public services so much!
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if this CSR was greeted not by pages of newsprint cataloguing the billions, but by some forensic comment on where so many of the billions have been wasted in the past, and some searching questions of how the money might be better spent in the future? Instead of announcing a list of large sums of money, the Chancellor could instead announce his shopping list of additional people and supplies he thinks the public sector needs, so we form a better impression of where all the money is going. I look forward to him reading out the list of extra management consultants,quangoes, bureaucrats, consultations, polling and reviews which makes up the content of so much of the actual increased spending of this government.
I want better public services. To deliver them we need the reform Blair promised but did not deliver. We need more choice for the users, and more competition in provision. It is time to end the farce of reading out a long list of extra sums of money, and then claiming all that would disappear if anyone else was in office.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
I don’t think the BBC are pro-Labour - they are pro government - not the government of the day but just of the prinicple of ever bigger & more expensive government. Not surprisng since they are in fact a government funded extension of the civil service. Thus the BBC are generally pro-replacing Trident, or at least unwilling to air the alternate arguments & have supported the EU both when opposition was derided as “right wing extremism” & as, when I was younger, left wing extremism.
One way of getting away with this is the misuse of language, a common fault in politics “right”, “left” or other.
Thus “investment” is invariably used to describe government spending when that term properly means only money spent to improve infrastructure & never day to day expenses. To an increasing extent the word “services” doesn’t apply either. “Services” means things done to serve people in ways they wish. As society becomes increasingly wealthy the state is able to extract enough money that it has to use it for things which manifestly do not serve individuals. Policing the smoking ban & windmills (indeed most greenery) manifestly exist for their own sake or to employ government employees rather than to serve (I suspect the same applies to most “social work”).
As Orwell pointed out the language we use constrains what opinions we can hold. It might be worthwhile for the Tories (or Conservatives) keep a list of such terms & drop the BBC a letter every time one is used incorrectly.
[Reply]
I agree with you 100% John,
Whenever Blair or Brown would brag in the commons on how much
they are spending in the health service then labour mps would cheer and get all excited as if tax and spend is a great virtue in itself.
It dosen’t seem to matter to them if so much of the money is wasted and that it is being poured down a black hole, they seem to hold the hardworking tax paying public in contempt, they don’t care that it is the publics money they are spending and so much of it being wasted.
If Brown was runing a company then the board of directors would have sacked him a long time ago for poor outcomes in relation to money spent. The sad thing is that the uk is stuck with this tax and spend and waste junkie until 2010 it seems.
[Reply]