I am going to write some pieces on better public sector management. The government says it is going to increase productivity by 2% a year. Its plans need at least that. This century so far there has been no overall public sector Labour productivity growth. So the bi* issue is how will they do this?
It will need examination of the range of activities carried out to see if some are redundant and if others could b3 performed better with more use of contracting out.
It requires better management of staff, with better incentive pay anĀ£ performance review.
It requires better management of computerisation, use of AI, robotics and other investment to assist employees.
It needs review of the number of layers of management and Ā promotion policies, and of the n7mbers of quangos involved as well as departments.
Please use this blog as an opportunity to express your views on what could deliver a more efficient higher quality public service offering
November 3, 2024
āBetter public sector managementā not hard it is currently appalling so much of what they do does positive harm so cut that out for a start.
Kemi I suppose felt she had to praise Sunak in sound acceptance speech. She sensible restricted her self to saying he was āhard workingā. Well yes but he had a broken compass. He doubled the national debt spending it on net harm lockdowns, net harm vaccines, HS2, duff degrees, open door migration, debased the currency with QE, caused the high inflation, pushed the mad Net Zero lunacy, refused to ditch the ECHR and pushed vast other waste, he appointed Hunt (a failed health Sec.) who increased taxes even further & hugely, he pushed out Boris and Truss both better PMs that he was. He lied or misled the house that the Covid Vaccines were safe. Then in an act of moronic stupidity he threw the towel in six month early. We should be having the election this month.
November 3, 2024
I said here long ago she would get the gig. It wasn’t difficult to guess. Not compared to the process which has allowed Labour almost a free reign.
November 3, 2024
‘LL see today’s
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14033321/Why-David-Cameron-Tony-Blair-loving-Notting-Hill-clique-REAL-ones -blame-years-crushing-Tory-defeat-writes
I respect Liz Truss and her integrity for being brave enough to call out how the Bank of England and factions in her own party undermined her when in the last chance saloon, even back then.
November 4, 2024
Indeed and May, Boris, Sunak, Bailey, Much of the treasuryā¦
November 3, 2024
Sunak was hardworking, he kept digging holes with great ability when he should have rested.
November 3, 2024
It requires above all a working compass that points in the right direction. We have not had a PM with one of those since Mrs Thatcher and even appointed the idiotic incompetent John ERM Major. Sunakās was 180 degree out on nearly every issue. Stramerās is even more out.
November 3, 2024
can you be greater than 180 degrees out? I thought as a very highly educated man of science you’d have not said that.
November 4, 2024
Yes 180 degrees out going faster and accelerating too!
November 4, 2024
MT, hee-hee.
November 3, 2024
Incentives give a sugar rush but quickly become a right of expectation.
There is a huge issue with the concept of budget in Government.
In the commercial world this “budget” would be called sales revenue. It is re-forecast monthly and expenditure adjusted to fit. The commercial incentive is to minimise expenditure.
The Government department incentive is to push expenditure to the limit. I’ve seen crazy purchasing as the year end approaches. The first rule of bureaucracy – never ever underspend your budget.
November 3, 2024
Worrying that Trumpās betting odds are falling slightly. He is still favourite but more like 57% to 43 % when it was 66% to 34%. I still think the modest & self effacing climate realist will win but hopefully it will to be too big to rig on Tuesday so we do not have all the post election battles and legal battles.
Why would anyone want to have to listen to the tedious, vacuous dope Kamal for four years. Trump is far more entertaining and has far better policies too. Plus the advantage the potty dope Lammy would surely have to go.
November 3, 2024
Last time there were multiple anomalies, too long to list here. This time expect another stream of late mail-in ballots, nearly all for her. Maricopa County has already announced they will need three weeks after the election to “count” the votes. Trump will have hundreds of extra observers to avoid the intimidation there was last time, but what can they do about that malpractice?
November 3, 2024
Three weeks to count just sounds as dodgy as ..
November 4, 2024
Hopefully far too big to be rigged. But given the political legal system!
November 3, 2024
āwhat could deliver a more efficient higher quality public serviceā
Well stop doing the many harmful things the state does – net zero, HS2, loans for duff degrees, blatant two Tier āJusticeā and policing, road blocking, net harm Covid vaccines, Lockdowns, open door to mainly low skilled immigration, give tax breaks for private school fees and private health care provision to encourage more to use them to save money, get a competent (and not compromised by big Pharma Vaccine) regulatorā¦ then fire half the state sector so they can get productive jobs instead. Plus hugely deregulated to release yet more people to get productive jobs from both state and the private compliance sectors. Cut taxes and simplify. Tax complexity and red tape are a tax on top of taxes and yet raise no tax.
In short the complete reverse of the Two Tier Kier Starmer and letās kill all growth and kill the economy Reeves agenda. The first woman Chancellor and the worst budget ever.
November 3, 2024
In the early eighties a woman was in effect determining the budgets: the then First Lord of the Treasury. Howe used to complain she was always in there looking over his shoulder and telling him what to do.
November 3, 2024
My wife is exactly the same Rose!
November 3, 2024
we feel for you and share the burden.
November 3, 2024
+1 poor Geoffrey, he had Elspeth looking over the other shoulder driving him in the opposite direction.
November 3, 2024
I once heard the two women in his life described as two wasps in a jam jar.
November 4, 2024
Lefty (Broken Bat) Howe (now 88) certainly needed help him with his wonky compass, but even Thatcher failed to cut government back sufficiently. She later even appointed John ERM Major as Chancellor a man who failed Maths (and nearly all his) O levels – not ideal material for Chancellor. He duly buries the party as badly as Sunak did.
November 3, 2024
Absolutely, first stop doing the harmful reckless things – so many EVs per ICE etc, etc
November 4, 2024
+1
November 4, 2024
Mad rigged markets in energy, cars, schooling, health care and the āfreeā NHS, housing, IHT hedging, transport, employmentā¦ it all does huge damage to the economy.
November 3, 2024
Elon Musk says, when speaking of designing a product, “the best part is no part”. That is evident in the rapid evolution of his Falcon rocket engines. If Trump wins, he says Musk will have a key role in reviewing government bureaucracy. Musk has already observed that there are more regulatory agencies in the USA than there are years since the foundation of the republic.
The UK suffers a similar problem. David Starkey argues that Blair and Brown have undermined parliamentary accountability to voters by creating agencies beyond the reach of MPs, citing the Bank of England, the Climate Change Committee, the OBR and even English Nature among them. He wants a Great Reform Act to abolish them. It will be revealing to see how much of this agenda Kemi Badenoch takes on board. Elimination of blinkered agencies, beyond parliament’s control, is a good place to start. Once that is done, AI and the rest has a role to play. I posted the other day that Google already produces a quarter of it’s software using AI agents.
November 3, 2024
DS was advising Jenrick.
November 3, 2024
Starkey is spot on. Will Starmer sigh up the appalling WHO Pandemic Preparedness Treaty?
I like free speech not that we have it and like Musk pushing for this. Though it always seems rather puzzling that he is apparently the worlds richest man. Both Tesla and Twitter seem to be absurdly overvalued to me.
November 3, 2024
I haven’t yet felt the need for Twit, and EVs are fine if you have no problem spending the money for a short trips car that you keep plugging in for longer than you drive it!
November 3, 2024
Public service should make greater use of limited time or short term appointments in preference to career appointments yielding direct public experience of the āpublic servicesā.
November 3, 2024
The quickest way to improve productivity would be to get rid of at least a third of the staff in most departments. Many have non jobs which actually stiffle productivity. All the DEI nonesense should be banned and much of the HR departments reduced to basic functions. HR departments for some unknown reason now seem to be incharge of policy.
Another drag on productivity is full time union staff paid by the taxpayer. The unions should be funding them.
There’s plenty of low hanging fruit.
November 3, 2024
Agreed.
November 3, 2024
Require all correspondence from public servants to carry both the contact details of the originator and the contact details of the named line manager to whom they are answerable.
November 3, 2024
Now that is the best suggestion I’ve read in ages, but needs the date added which is often missing..
November 3, 2024
+1 especially the unions paying their own stirring bullies – not the tax payer
November 3, 2024
āThe government says it is going to increase productivity by 2% a year.ā
Just 2% you could make it 50% more efficient in one year just by dropping all the many activities that do net harm some listed above. Then releasing the people who do these activities to get productive jobs instead, together with the many compliance people they force the private sector to employ. Stopping low skilled migration (legal and illegal) would probably add another 20% or so.
November 3, 2024
For the NHS in particular we should question the ratio of medical staff to none medical staff at 53% to 47% at present. Imagine a Royal Navy destroyer where half the crew were ship’s writers.
If you want computerisation and AI to reduce the administarive staff you first have to clearly define what computers and AI should do. All citizens could carry their complete medical record on a chip on a necklace or keyring. Advantageous if you have an accident or adverse medical occurance. All for less than a fiver. Forget politicians comment on ID cards, ask 70 million citizens in a referendum. At the very least it could tell those that need to know, who is legally in the UK and who is not.
November 3, 2024
Also tell the State whether you have taken their āShotā. No thanks.
This is why the UK is in such trouble, too man6 people like you want complete control!
November 3, 2024
Even contracting out is a failure. Look at the prison service, look at The Olympics.
Once a firm is on the preferred suppliers list they are in the money.They can do no wrong. Disastrous projects are no hindrance. They continue to get even more government work. The names of some of the firms are well known, but there are many more that escape adverse publicity.
November 3, 2024
Indeed the state is useless at running things (The NHS), useless at building things, useless at subcontracting things (HS2) and useless at regulating things too (banks, vaccines, blood, water companies, insurance companies, investment companies, cladding companiesā¦)
November 3, 2024
Good morning.
In the car industry we slowly saw the emergence of robotics. Machines designed to do the dull, sometimes dirty and repetitive jobs. They do not strike. Do not take a tea break. Do not take holiday’s or fall sick. They helped in raising both productivity, quality and lower price.
Many years ago I was involved with a client who wanted to take on the refurbishment of an old London hospital. It was to be a complete redesign from the ground up. The technologies that were looked at were robots. And specifically robots designed and developed in Japan. We looked at robots that could replace Porters (ie Beds that could move independently with just a nurse) and robots that would travel via a dedicated tunnel and lift network to dispense drugs to wards.
I will post links separately so this post can pass moderation and allow our kind host to look at them at his leisure. One I will post right now is from HM Government (2019) website so should be OK.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/care-robots-could-revolutionise-uk-care-system-and-provide-staff-extra-support
November 3, 2024
Trouble is… when AI has taken over all the jobs… what will the humans be doing?
November 3, 2024
What humans ? š
November 3, 2024
Humans that fix the robots that take care of the humans……
The very idea that the socialists think improving efficiency in the public sector is laughable. Look at the record so far; read the intentions. Our only hope is that Ms Badenoch follows her conservative instincts, causes the government front bench great discomfort, get Reform onside, tell the ‘one nation’ Tory members to resign and join the Libdems, then populate the next PCP candidates with people with life experience, real jobs, and conservative, common sense principles.
November 3, 2024
Sorry Peter, but that is the funniest thing I have read in a while š
November 3, 2024
AI will make a bigger and quicker mess than humans, it has more capacity.
November 3, 2024
what will the humans be doing? answer: running faster than the robots?
November 3, 2024
MB,
‘I will post links separately so this post can pass moderation and allow our kind host to look at them at his leisure. ‘
Might be easier to just post as Lifelogic. He has told us none of his stuff gets deleted.
November 3, 2024
It would be a worry if he also had loads rejected.
November 3, 2024
Here are the links to other sites on robots in heathcare.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/01/09/1065135/japan-automating-eldercare-robots/
https://japanupclose.web-japan.org/techculture/t20240531_6.html
https://aparc.fsi.stanford.edu/research/impact-robots-nursing-home-care-japan
https://www.easts-journal.com/articles/an-introduction-to-robots-and-artificial-intelligence-for-healthcare-in-japan-and-south-korea-copy
https://online-engineering.case.edu/blog/medical-robots-making-a-difference
November 3, 2024
If our kind host allows. This is what we were looking at:
https://www.time-medical.com/bed-transport-assistance-robot
November 3, 2024
Stop ordering absurd EV buses, fire engines, ambulances, refuse trucks, vansā¦ they save no CO2 (if that bother you), are far more expensive, depreciate more rapidly are far less practical, cost more to insure, have range issues, are slow to ārefillā, heavier, cause more tyre wear and road wearā¦ plus they might well burn down your fire station, hospital, bus depot, car park, house, ferry, tunnelā¦
November 3, 2024
Absolutely agree!
November 3, 2024
The simplest route to improving Public Sector efficiency is to ensure no one in the Public Sector is allowed to retire before the national retirement age of 67.
That would reduce the pensions bill and stop the constant need to back fill for early retirements.
A second efficiency improvement would be to have a recruitment freeze. The Public sector should be limited in number to a maximum of, say 15% of the working population. With the advances in IT and AI that reduction in headcount should be easily achievable.
One final thought maybe if the Public Sector was banned from using Fax machines that would also improve efficiency, and reduce paper waste.
November 3, 2024
an alternative could be to unload 10% of staff in each grade every year, but limit hiring to only say 4% of reduced level.
November 3, 2024
Scrap the Equality Act and DEI (Didn’t Earn It) Agenda and recruit / appoint people based solely on their qualifications, experience and suitability for the role.
Then sack all the Diversity Managers across the whole of the Public Sector.
November 3, 2024
And all the net zero managers!
November 3, 2024
and halve the ‘Human Remains ‘ staff.
November 3, 2024
I think more visibility (and accountability) of the senior management would very much help. Some of these “departments” would be quite large companies if they were in the private sector and management would be publishing annual accounts and reports that the shareholders (and markets) could consider. They also have to compete in those markets of course.
Then there is the problem that they (senior public sector managers) can have many different ‘Executive Board’ members over short periods of time – they are called Ministers I believe – that will often have no or little direct experience and may not be around very long. I imagine ‘Yes Minister’ is required study for PS managers.
If I was looking at a listed company, I would be able to see their price/earnings, return on capital and relative performance to similar businesses in the same sector. In other words, how well managed they were and whether they were a good investment (or not). Something similar is required in the public sector. Start with NHS Trusts. There are lots of them and there are clearly differences in performance. Find out why and get rid of poor managers and promote the good ones. No more jobs for life for people who can’t or don’t perform. They wouldn’t last in most private companies, why accept less in the public sector?
Reply Government departments have Directors and external non execs, and publish a large amount of material. You can see tge waste and poor productivity on display. I often highlight bad performance in e.g. railways and Post Office.
November 3, 2024
I’m sure that the data is there Sir John but how much of it is really visible to the public in a way that they can understand? If I invest money in a Telco company and it loses 50% in value over 5-6 years, I know there is a management problem there. We need to move away from Ministers taking all the blame for failures in the PS, especially when the problems seem endemic and he/she has only been in post for a few months. I know these PS managers get dragged into HoC’s committees etc but we need better ways to make them really visible and acountable.
How many voters can name the head of the NHS in England? They probably know who Wes Streeting is but I doubt they’ve ever heard of Amanda Pritchard. She should be on our TVs explaining where our money is going, why the waiting lists are getting longer and what she intends to do about it. After all, as CEO she will have more influence on the practical execution of any business plan than Streating will ever have. Let’s also see more of the NHS Executive Board too. Maybe they should stand for election for a 5 year term and be quizzed in public on their beliefs & ideas?
Public Ownership, Public Accountability. Let’s give the Public Sector tree a good shaking. It clearly needs it!
November 3, 2024
I remember her saying something extremely stupid shortly after she was appointed but cannot remember now what it was. The chap before now (Lord something) was rather unimpressive too. She read Modern History and has worked for the NHS all her life. So she should be an expert in how not to run things.
November 3, 2024
She clearly know how to acquire more money, for less output.
November 3, 2024
May I go off topic to what is considered a legitimate political issue, especially now, in American politics but not in British politics – abortion.
Kamala Harris is emphasising her commitment to giving women a right to an abortion. I am not sure she is wise in this because it is an even more serious issue for opponents of abortion that drives them to Trump whereas to those who favour abortion it is usually just one issue among many. She is also being dishonest in claiming it is within the President’s power to do much to affect abortion legislation as that is a matter mainly for Congress and the Supreme Court in America. Moreover Trump’s policy of delegating it to states to hold referendums is better because in political elections it is just one matter out of many whereas referendums are entirely focused on the particular issue.
However, most important Harris and Democrats talk about reproductive rights and a woman’s right/freedom to choose concerning her own body. Yes, women do have a choice and a right to choose but the real issue amounts to when they can exercise their right to choose. Harris thinks it is after conception but I say preferably not – women’s right to choose exists when they choose to have unprotected sex with a man which is also when they choose to share their body with a fetus – it is then no longer just their body!
Attitudes to abortion depend on when a person begins to exist. The usual religious view (I am an atheist) is at conception and the modern liberal view is at birth. Both are distinct points and there are no other distinct points which makes it difficult for those inbetween who point out that at conception a fetus is only a few cells and fetuses can survive outside the womb before birth. My personal view is that abortion ethically somewhat undermines humanity and should only be permitted (except for medical reasons) up to 13 weeks of pregnancy.
Reply The U.K. settles this by debate and free vote in
Parliament. There are no current plans I have heard of to reopen the U.K. settlement.
November 3, 2024
And USA is now settling it that way, in the state legislatures, following the SC ruling.
November 3, 2024
I agree Geoffrey.
November 3, 2024
+1
November 3, 2024
My views on abortion were firmly cemented when I watched my youngest grandson (just a tiny sparrow-like figure) in the NiCU struggling to survive. Happily he did so and is now a very healthy toddler who will be “blessing” us with his very active presence tomorrow. There clearly should be a cut-off date for abortion and that in my view is when the baby is technically viable. Once outside it’s mothers womb, the child clearly has rights, so I really don’t understand why some think it shouldn’t whilst still inside it.
If the mother/parents don’t want the child, then I’m sure there will be others who will. Adoption seems a much better choice than the alternative and we clearly need more babies in this country.
November 3, 2024
1) a huge bonfire of regulations and their box-tick-demands;
2) firewalls between public services and ‘industry’, especially a huge one between Whitehall mandarins and ‘industry’ so that swishing from a cosy job in Whitehall or Town Hall to easy employment as CEO of a Big Business company or NGO is forbidden, especially if the person in question is already in receipt of a public sector pension;
3) get everybody back into their offices: no more WFH! Am I the only one who finds it reprehensible that those who WFH can claim a heating allowance while pensioners have their WFA cancelled?
4) Instead of all those courses for public servants on DEI, BLM, Gender stuff – scrap them! – make them attend a ‘consciousness raising course’ to learn that they are our servants, not our masters, and that all the money – both for their projects and for their stipends – comes from us, the taxpayers. That it’s not theirs but ours and they have to account for every penny – to us.
November 3, 2024
I didn’t know public service employees working from home could get a heating allowance. Absolutely disgusting, especially when there would be probably someone else living there anyway. And its often their demand and choice. Again, absolutely disgusting. But when did gov management care about such injustice? MPs are not that bothered either.
November 3, 2024
Yes. And if they happen to live outside the London area, but nominally work within it because the office they no long attend is located there, they still get the London Weighting Living Allowance
November 3, 2024
It should be clear that labours promises about creating a productive economy is nothing but hot air, and they certainly have no intention of putting pressure on their friends in the civil service to smarten their act up.
Yes, we deserve an effective service from those employed to support government, but for a long time now it’s been the tail of the civil service wagging the government dog. In so many ways government has been ineffective.
There is no heart in making improvements in how thing are done, not within government and certainly not in the civil service.
November 3, 2024
The easier pickings are removing public services we don’t need at all (e.g. NHS diversity programmes), rather than ones that we do need but which need reform in order to be delivered efficiently (e.g. NHS clinical services).
Voters need to very fed up before anything at all will happen, and there needs to be a political Party offering serious reform. We haven’t had that since Thatcher.
November 3, 2024
I feel I can contribute to items 1 and 2. It is very serious that public sector productivity per worker has stagnated for all of this century. I believe the main reason will be that these public sector departments have been overstaffed for all of this century. The equivalent did not happen in the private sector as productivity is a key performance metric in that sector.
In my opinion the first thing to do is to find out when departmental productivity began to diminish. Once that is confirmed then the situation can be assessed and rectified to get the productivity levels back to that level once again.
I would just like to add being overstaffed is not only a detriment to departmental productivity, and an unnecessary cost to the taxpayer, it also causes wage compression for the existing staff too (ie their wages are lower because what income would have been allocated to them is being allocated to too many staff). This is not theory, it is confirmed by the ONS when explaining their methodology for Average Weekly Earnings, ie:
‘…an increase in the relative number of employees in low-paying industries would cause average earnings to fall.’
So overstaffing is a serious situation which affects the departments’ productivity, the taxpayer and the existing employees’ income. The excess employees need to be transferred from unproductive work to productive work (where their own wages will increase too).
Reply Productivity scarcely grew 1997- 2020 then nosedived to 2023. civil service. Umbers came down to 384,000 by 2016 only to shoot up to over 510,000 now.
November 3, 2024
The best route to better public sector management is to get rid of this government. Labour have come in on a schedule of doom and gloom with no sense of hope, spooking enterprise right from the get-go. They have showered money on their preferred unionised mates, telling everyone else we need to take the pinch. They have taken a fire-hose to private sector aspiration and their first budget is to directly damage them. The left wing press has been trying to put lipstick on the pig of their financial prospects for the country. Many farmers are now looking in despair about the future of their family’s livelihood. The government response is to double down on their decision rather than repent of their spite, arguing as it only destroys a modest percentage of farms it’s OK.
The last government was bad, but this one is incompetence on steroids. Usually I hope that sense might one day prevail when our government acts foolishly, but in their case I have no hope.
November 3, 2024
Firstly, nothing can be achieved until the top tiers of the civil service are replaced with proper management.
Secondly, most tasks and jobs should be geared far more towards performance, with pay and other rewards reflecting good work.
Thirdly, excessive “sickness” adsence needs to be driven down and paid non-work activities need to be eliminated.
Finally, politics needs to be driven out of the civil service.
November 3, 2024
It needs managerial insistence that individual public sector employees do their jobs throughout their full contracted hours and, wherever possible, in a location where they can be supervised doing so. To take one example, the delay in progressing probate applications – where the bereaved relatives and their professional advisers will have done all the prior paperwork – is an utter disgrace, given the additional grief thereby inflicted upon those relatives. It is difficult to attribute this to anything other than WFH and associated slacking.
November 3, 2024
Slightly off topic, but relevant to the net zero lunacy.
This morning, wind is supplying a massive 1, yes 1, (count them) Gw.
November 4, 2024
It’s increased to 9% (2.7Gw) at the moment Ed – with 56.1% (20.7Gw) from Gas and 12.7% (4.7Gw) from Nuclear – Imports are 14%. Virtually no Solar, not very suprising looking out the window this morning.
This is the reality of renewables and it’s quite clear that alternative sources of power will be required for a very long time because the storage technology required to make renewables really viable, simply doesn’t exist at the moment.
November 3, 2024
I would put Alan Sugar in charge of the NHS after he had Fired most of the management
I would have a review
November 3, 2024
Reform and good decision making takes time
There is to much money going into the NHS to quickly
This will lead to another poor outcome
November 3, 2024
188 criminals arrived in the UK yesterday from the safe country of France ā¦.whatās the no.1 mission of Border Force ā¦.to secure our borders
November 3, 2024
“The government says it is going to increase productivity by 2% a year.”
How will this be measured?
November 3, 2024
Well I guess using the same methods as used for defining the productivity in different sectors from the period 1997 to 2022
ons.gov.uk 17/11/2023 āPublic service productivity, UK: 1997 to 2022ā.
(As an aside, I find curious that you donāt know that).
November 3, 2024
hefner :
Do you refer please to the ONS page :
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity/publicservicesproductivity/articles/publicserviceproductivityuk/1997to2022
where the ONS write in bold type :
“These are Experimental Statistics. These nowcast estimates will be subject to revision as modelling methods are refined and more up-to-date data becomes available. We advise caution when using the data.”
Sorry, but I wouldn’t believe the results or “data” from this modelling any more than I believe the entirely false IPCC radiative transfer climate models.
November 3, 2024
A very good question Richard.
Because there are many different ways of measuring productivity.
(As an aside, I find it curious that hefner doesn’t know that)
November 3, 2024
The real question Sir John is how much “Management ” do staff need ?
If you review the rise in the “Management Culture” since the 1970’s you will see the gradual removal of responsibility of action, together with training to a skill level a bit more than required for the day to day job for staff. But very helpful if things don’t run as usual. It is no longer good enough to be a Senior, leading, etc this or that. You have to be a manager, not actually do the job but managing it. What ever that means. Not too big a problem if you are managing a group of plumbers and were a plumber before becoming a manager.
But now we have mangers manging tasks they could not do themselves. Now to become a senior manager you have to be managing managers. So to progress in the world of management you have to look to justify having managers working for you.
So it ends up like a invented pyramid scheme with few actual productive workers at the coal face reporting to a management chain.
November 3, 2024
Well I’d suggest that for every 20 Civil Servants, there will be 4 team leaders probably 2 grades higher, each of them will have a different Manager at least 2 grades higher, and all 4 Managers will report to a Senior Executive at least 3 grades higher. This model indicates 29 in total without the obligatory career management, human resources input, payroll, reviews and union representation if they wish.
November 3, 2024
āI do believe that whilst there is a great deal one can do in terms of training people who already have a natural aptitude, unless youāre recruiting the very best young people, the very best senior people as a starting point so that they start to recognise those young people and bring them through, until we start taking the management of these complex organisations seriously, in the way that management is taken seriously in commercial organisations, frankly weāre just going to be chipping away at the edges of the problem in the NHS…. I think what the NHS needs to learn is that actually you donāt solve problems by throwing money at it, and not every problem actually needs money to solve it. Thatās the first lesson. Secondly, to get out of their heads the idea that things have to take three years to do and get into the idea that there is a series of objectives that we need to do now, and that weāve got months, not years to do it. Those two things, I think, would have the biggest single impact on the way that the Health Service is managed.ā
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can_Gerry_Robinson_Fix_the_NHS%3F
And that was in 2007 ā¦
November 3, 2024
The Chancellor has not shown good judgement which is why the countries borrowing cost has gone up
So the extra money does not all get spent on public services
It get spent on servicing 100bn loan interest payments which are higher now since the Budget
November 3, 2024
How about stop enforcing the Agenda of the UN and WEF in this country and start applying the wishes of the British people?
They could make a start by banning Not-a-Conservative MPs from attending Davos. I’m sure Badenoch will approve (not).
November 3, 2024
Indeed. It sticks in the craw somewhat to notice that in 2023, when the WEF had its first full-on gathering in Davos since lockdown, the UK’s official “public figures” delegation comprised Shapps, Starmer, Reeves…..and Badenoch.
November 3, 2024
I suppose by creating some sort of an incentive for public sector management to increase productivity. So make their pay rises and continued employment contingent on meeting productivity targets, and make the bonus pool for all employees contingent on that too. So more like the private sector. It will never happen of course.
November 3, 2024
Must bonus inducements be fostered to promote achievement from those with a job for life in a low energy, low effort culture absent from any real sanctions for poor performance? Also, why should employees need bonuses for only doing their job?
I do not say bonuses should not feature but they seem to have become routine and hence reward ordinary endeavour that should be covered adequately by ordinary pay.
November 3, 2024
A limit to paid sick days.
Pensions in line with the private sector that pay for the public sector pensions.
Performance targets for all workers.
Dismissal for constant absenteeism or failure to meet targets.
November 3, 2024
Mike
I think public service employees should have their salaries, holidays, sick pay, terms of employment and pensions completely changed to that which is similar to a median of those found in private industry.
Then a simple cut off date applied, to accept the new conditions or take redundancy, again on the minimum of legal terms.
A complete recalculation of lower staff numbers, with lower departmental budgets, with if possible new realistic targets set as a minimum requirement for productivity.
We simply need fewer people to do more at less cost !
To replace the almost entitlement attitude of doing less with more which has been happening for years.
November 3, 2024
Theyāll never do it Alan, theyāre about to push private sector companies sick rates up.
I have one whole person just to tick all the required boxes now, twenty years ago that wasnāt necessary.
November 4, 2024
Agree it is harsh and drastic, but it is the only way you will get real change, we have reached the point of confrontation, because the employees are at the moment running the show, and making unrealistic and unaffordable demands (working from home, sickness, absence, high rates of pay, inefficient working, etc etc) just as the miners, the print workers, and car workers, and ship workers did decades ago.
To beat it the management/politicians need to be strong and resolute, and be ready for a very long stand off, and that is the week spot at the moment, politicians are weak, and have no real desire to change whilst they can tax everyone to the hilt to pay and avoid such.
November 3, 2024
Hi Alan – indeed, but it will never happen. The unions wonāt allow it and no politician has the stomach for that sort of fight. Iāve accepted weāre doomed. The state will consume us and we are heading for proper communism and soviet style society and living standards. I am advising my sons to either leave the country or work for the public sector.
November 3, 2024
As many have said, there must be a masive reduction in the number of controlling agencies and the like, most of which have grown out of control and have negative influence on all our lives.
At a different level, there ought to be decentralisation. I live in a small village, 16 miles from a large hospital and 8 from the doctors, so called. Very difficult to get in touch with. They expect everyone to be computer experts to do this.
I would suggest, if they care any more, they should set up a system for each village to get a nurse visit, once a week or two, say.
People would be able to turn up and get minor things looked into and probably fixed. Just turn up, no prior arrangement. If they needed more attention, an appointment date to be made then with the doctor, no deferrment. I would go into more detail but there isn’t space and it might get a bit boring.
November 3, 2024
This sounds useful John.We need creativity amongst all this appalling sameness.The changes I believe in will probably come into being when I am no longer here. A lot of people will smart, just like I have in my career .The disregard I have had to face,the put downs and ridiculous focus on school results ,the claims that my work was somehow passed dowm psychically by newbie’s etc.
At the moment I am the target of administration incompetence where the practitioner is made responsible for admin not conclusively fulfilling their role.They keep trying .I have had years of it.
We first need to only have characters who are truthful and honest and try and forgive mistakes which don’t have great impact.We need to stop the blame culture then professionals can concentrate more on better outcomes rather than watching their own back.
November 3, 2024
Margaret
Sounds like you need a proper management system with competent people in charge.
November 3, 2024
First should be an assessment of what government is for.
Having reduced its responsibilities each employee should be given objectives that deliver this for less money.
November 3, 2024
From hard experience of taking over companies that are not well-managed, over 100 in my career, you first have to look at staff numbers. In my business, a low-margin industry, 50% of our cost base walked through the door each morning. So we could not afford to carry passengers. We needed good, self-motivated people, and I had some excellent teams.
So, the first thing needed in good public sector management is a dramatic reduction in numbers. Until you do that, you will never know how many you need. I would suggest making 400,000 redundant, and you will be amazed at how the work can be done more efficiently and effectively by the 130,000 left. That would say Ā£17 billion in immediate costs and probably almost as much again in pensions.
November 3, 2024
But, as you know, cannot (and will my) ever happen. Unless you incentivise managers to get rid of staff but maintain services. The public sector is insatiable. It has to be constantly fed. It has to grow. Why would it do anything else.
November 3, 2024
Sir John..How best to improve efficiencies in the civil service? a) One way is to make everyone..everyone..sackable if he/she is not doing a good job. A lot of people who join the civil service are probably in it for its ‘security aspect’. Let’s be brutally honest about this. They’ll always have a job, always get their monthly..whether they’re good at their job or not. They’re obviously not go-getters who are prepared to take risks in the hurly-burly (spelling?) of lyf. And when such ‘comfort’ is allowed, I can imagine a lot ‘do a job’ yet have no incentive to do their very best in it. There’s no ‘skin in the game’..as the Amis neatly put it. Nothing to make ’em really want to excel. (ie the ‘survival instinct’ is not being tested in any way). The Civil Service should not be the easy ride it is with these people expecting – and getting – bigger wages comparative to the private sector and bigger pensions (which in former times was not the case..and this was the trade-off for the ‘security’ lark). b) Bringing in professional managers would certainly help too!
November 3, 2024
Fine all departments for unproductive work. They must demonstrate the productivity per Ā£, if they canāt it must be assumed to have been unproductive. The future budget for that Department will be allocated – fine.
November 3, 2024
To be clear this is āallocation funding minus fineā a downward ratchet.
November 3, 2024
This is very important because we are seeing the US count in action in the rest of the world now too.
Sandu received 29.2% of the votes in Transnistria after 90% of the protocols were processed, Stoianoglo received 79.7%. In Gagauzia, Sandu did not even receive 5% of the votes.
Suddenly Maia Sandu overtakes Alexandru Stoianoglo after 92.20% of protocols counted she is on 50.09%.
All just at the end, like the Welsh Referendum, like the US 2020 Presidential vote.
Brace yourself for Harris winning with more votes than there are peopleš
November 4, 2024
Moldovan citizens living in Russia were excluded from the voting in the second round.
November 3, 2024
It requires a determination to stand up to established workforces and their unions.
So no chance of the present lot achieving anything and to be honest nor did our people
November 3, 2024
There is a vast raft of grant aided QUANGOs and charities that spend, or waste, billions of our money. The Arts and Humanities Research Council?ā (AHRC), is a subset of the UK Research and Innovation QUANGO and awarding approximately Ā£110 million of funding. Here are a few examples.
Ā£841,830: The Europe that Gay Porn Built, 1945-2000
Ā£120,766: Cuteness in Contemporary Culture: Developing Ecopoetic Practice
Ā£785,359: Understanding Displacement Aesthetics and Creating Change in the Art Gallery for Refugees, Migrants and Host Communities
Ā£452,623: Screen Encounters with Britain: What do young Europeans make of Britain and its digital screen culture?
Ā£136,909: Perverse Collections: Building Europeās Queer and Trans Archives
Ā£805,769: Decolonising the Museum: Digital Repatriation of the Gaidinliu Collection from the UK to India (DiMuse)
Ā£314,712: Nasaweāsx yaāyuācenxi (Weaving Our Own Justice): Justice and Authority in the Nasa Communities of the Saāth Tama Kiwe Territory, Caldono, Colombia.
Ā£313,201: Building reproductive justice with indigenous women in the Northeast of Brazil
Ā£311,002: Indigenous Film Ecologies in India
Ā£197,150: Indigenous youth subcultures and new media in Latin America
Ā£175,476: Eco-activist Film and Visual Art From Latin America
Ā£67,480: Milking it: colonialism, heritage and everyday engagement with dairy
The Arts Council itself has a budget of Ā£410,000,000. I would abolish it completely and the Department for Culture. Media and Sport can directly subsidise national galleries, orchestras and opera companies of note and let the rest find their own money. Budding artists and writers should fund their own lifestyles by selling their work, or apply for grants from charitable foundations, not the taxpayer.
November 4, 2024
Agree ……we could cancel half of government and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to the ‘working people’ in the UK
November 4, 2024
Glen: what a depressing thought! I have not been a (paid) working person for many years, but would be thrilled if that halving were to happen!
November 3, 2024
The public sector loves job creation. Their targets are too loose and they get paid well whether they hit them or not, see Patel when she removed the HO targets altogether.
One little example. A new housing estate has a road leading up to it that just wasnāt laid to cope with the amount of new cars so the tarmac got chewed up, massive pot holes, people damaging their cars for 18 months, finally the new estate is relaying the road but only at the entrance and in the estate, but rather than the council ask them to quote to repair the other nearby pot holes at the same time on the same road as the estate builder had the crew, expense of putting in temporary traffic lights, having a super vehicle to dig up the old road and relay the new, they didnāt bother. So soon the council will need to hire someone else to put in temporary lights, dig up the road and relay it!
There is no-one that seems to look at things like a small business owner would to save money, do things effectively and thoroughly first time, find ways to improve, find cost effective but good quality quotes. Itās all about creating more public sector jobs. I tried to get a free role on the Council years ago in standards, worst interview Iāve experienced in my life, it was more an interrogation so I backed off. I look at my area and see many ways to improve things we used to have local area meetings, labour screwed that up and the Tories stopped the meetings.
November 3, 2024
reduce numbers from 6 million to 2 million.
November 4, 2024
Interesting German gentleman on Portillo yesterday talking about the ongoing decline of the German industrial economy. I thought “19th Century technology building 20th Century products in the 21st Century” was a brilliant summary. Their motor industry has great expertise in ICE vehicles but that counts for little with the move to EVs. Volkswagon are already in distress. He was very clear that the Chinese are eating the German lunch in terms of Cars, Heavy Machinery and Chemicals – in other words a good deal of what underpins the German industrial economy.
It will be interesting to see how Brussels reacts to it’s largest paymaster struggling. I suspect the Bundesbank is going to be even more careful with what it allows the EU to get up too. Not good news for us I’m afraid but we should at least be happy that we don’t have to fully share their misery. We have quite enough of our own.
November 5, 2024
To reduce the numbers of civil servants to pre Covid would be a start
November 8, 2024
Dear Sir John,
I think that we way in which education is provided should be reviewed. I think that we should provide each child with a voucher that their parents spend choosing the school.
I would also allow schools the freedom to teach what they want and how they want – within reason. They should be in control of their own disciplinary structure.
Good schools will thrive and expand and poor schools not so much.