Oct 22 2007
The Conservatives need to challenge Brown’s tax and waste culture
Most people know that large sums of money spent by the government are wasted. Even the government has been forced to admit it, by setting itself mutli billion pound targets for savings out of increased efficiency. Yet still government Ministers parrot that public services are better because they are spending so much extra money on them.
The useless BBC rarely asks Ministers what they are spending the extra money on that makes the services better, allowing them to get away with the nonsense that all extra spending is good. If the Heath Secretary goes on an extra "fact finding" trip abroad we are told health care has improved because spending has gone up. If the Health department employs hundreds of extra private sector consultants to advise on central targets or restructuring, we are told health care has improved because its costing more . If The Health Department spends a fortune on a new computer system to change the recuitment of doctors, which messes up the whole process, we are told health care has improved. If glossy brochures could create a great health servcie we would by now have the best in the world. The latest documents on dealing with obesity are themselves very fat, with one mega glossy that covers a small coffee table and three other A4 glossies just for good measure on the same subject on the same day. Is this the paperwork that will launch a million slimming diets? I doubt it.
People want more money spent on more doctors, nurses, teachers, and policemen to deal with shortages and queues. They do not want more money spent on bureaucracy, centralised targets, too many government interventions, bigger Ministerial drinks cupboards or more management consultancy contracts. The Opposition needs to distinguish between good increased spending - money which buys an improvement in service - and bad extra spending - money which is wasted or goes on the wrong priorities.
Maybe the way fortward is to move the debate to discussing outcomes rather than cost. I would be happier to hear both government and Opposition concentrating on setting out what we can expect from our Health Service or our schools, and then competing to produce it for best value, not for highest cost. You do not hear shops on the High Street telling customers to come to them because they spend more on conusltancy contracts and the stock room than their rivals. They appeal by claiming to have the best products and services at the keenest price. We need to moved the debate on public service back onto the commonsense ground of value for money and quality, away from the idea that dearest is always best.
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
The government do talk about outcomes, but only the ones that suit them. We need an independent statistics commission to take this kind of spin out of the equation.
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Your argument is well made and I agree whole-heartedly. Unfortunately, there are so many “clients” of Brown’s largesse with our money that you will need to work very hard to overcome what has in effect been the buying of votes by creating a dependency culture. How many more people are in receipt of the multitude of “benefits”, on quangos, in consultancies to various government departments, in valueless “jobs” created as a result of government policies, or in organisations dependant on government contracts, since Labour came to power? Brown has worked tirelessly to develop his client state. He has no vision or comprehension of how an organisation should function but has ruthlessly achieved his ambition of becoming Prime Minister and will continue to squander our money to keep it.
I was always taught as a youngster that if ever I had a larger than usual amount of money then I should either put it into the bank or buy something worthwhile with it. Otherwise the money would end up being frittered away in a hundred different ways. That is how it is with the Labour government. They have so much money at their disposal they literally don’t know what to do with it and they waste it on 1001 half baked ideas with no end product. The money is never targeted towards front-line services it is just handed over in bulk to each department which then tries to decide what it is going to do with it. Quite literally it is a case of the more they have, the more they waste.
I agree with Tony’s comments, they make sense.
Labour are full of empty promises and spin. This was really brought home to me even more when I watched ‘Britains 20 Best and 20 Worst Places to Live’ on Channel Four, on Sunday.
Predominately the 20 worst places to live were Labour held seats, with a few Lib Dem MP’s thrown in. And, predominately the 20 best places to live were held by Conservative MPs.
Just shows that under Labour they have not reached out and helped, as they promised, the most vulnerable and disaffected. Then, you get morons like Nick Clegg blaming everything on Thatcherism. Despite the fact that Labour have been in power now for 10 years. I think we’re all just a bit tired of people like Nick Clegg, coming out with the same old cliches about the Conservative Party. We’ve changed, they haven’t.
When I used to work in the paper industry who do you think was our biggest UK customer of copier paper? I can only assume they found it more useful than Herceptin. It might be worth investigating if this is still the case and use it as a stick to beat the government with. Their spend on these products ought to have reduced significantly given how much they’ve spent on IT in the NHS.
The irony of it all is that the Gershon Report which they have commissioned has been a waste of money as well . The report set targets for reducing waste which were punctually missed and of course more money was wasted thus. The situation reminds me of a true story in Italy a state famous for its bureaucracy and inefficiencies . In 1956 the Italian government commisioned a Quango called IGED ( rough translation for institution for the liquidation of non useful Quangos ) and identified 600 quangoes to be liquidated . None were liquidated of course but in the meantime 827 were identified . Guess what some could eventually be liquidated but by the year 2000 138 of these quangoes were still up and running despite IGED efforts. By 2002 it was clear that IGED itself was to be deemed a useful Quango as it could not fullfill its obligation thus becoming itself useless Quango number 139. Since then the IGED is trying as best as it can to liquidate itself but cannot even perform this function and is still sucking more money from the public purse .