There are numerous ways to boost public sector productivity.
1. Recruitment freeze, forcing managers to promote or transfer existing staff into the important roles and eliminate other jobs as people leave or retire.
2. Regular review of old initiatives to wind Ā them up and transfer staff to better uses. Old initiatives in government often linger on long after the Ministerial impetus has gone.
3. Rule against both employing staff to do a job and employing consultants to do the work for them, Consultants Ā should only be used where the state lacks expertise and does not need permanent expertise of that kind.
4. Contract out more activities. Give staff the opportunity to buy out or be given their activity with an initial contract to supply the government.
5. Reduce office space for home working, with more hot desking.
6. Sell surplus assets.
7. De stock with more just in time delivery contracts for bought in goods.
8. Review energy use in public buildings, More insulation, better thermal controls.
9. Try to avoid heavy use of bought in contract Labour at higher pay than existing staff.
10. Identify overlap and excessive process by function to reduce duties of various departments and quangos.
December 9, 2024
11. Pay workers according to the value of outcomes they achieve.
December 10, 2024
So about half of them would have no pay at all, 25% would actually have to pay money in for the net harm they do (things like Net Zero, HS2, worthless degree, road blocking, the mad energy policyā¦) and the others 25% would be on about 70% average of their current levels of pay plus their gold plated pensions.
December 10, 2024
You’ll be asking turkeys to vote for Christmas next
Even to accept there is waste and scope for savings will be impossible
Only yesterday Mcfadden announced a Ā£100 million to set up an efficiency task force. Does that sound like a cost cutting initiative. That will be more staff, more pay and more gold plated pensions.
Paid for with the WFA.
You must be smoking something very powerful John
December 10, 2024
Just an observation today regarding the national grid. We are exporting 2.0gw at the relatively low price of Ā£86 per gw and using precious gas to provide the excess. I don’t see our European neighbours exporting their gas supplied power later on this winter when it gets really scarce.
Just saying.
December 10, 2024
Judging from previous events, we will pay upwards of Ā£1,000/MWh to secure supply. We might even again pay the Belgians almost Ā£10,000/MWh to ensure that the French continue to be supplied.
December 10, 2024
While Global Times are reporting ā
āChina-Russia east-route natural gas pipeline fully operational with key equipment made domesticallyā https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202412/1324227.shtml
MSM.com are reporting =
āHundreds of panels at the giant 190-acre Porth Wen solar farm in Anglesey, North Wales – only built two years ago – were blown off their mountings, some ripped to shredsā https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/storm-darragh-leaves-uk-s-biggest-solar-farm-in-pieces/ar-AA1vyCVI
Net-zero is ironic
December 10, 2024
I’m surprised McFadden didn’t just empower the employees in these large state organisations to suggest money-saving solutions, and if they work, they would get a financial reward.
December 10, 2024
Storm Darragh leaves UK’s Biggest solar farm in Angelsy in pieces. The panels hardly make any economic sense (without subsidy and market rigging) and with current interest rates perhaps paying back in 20 at best and years if lucky. But then if a storm hits every few years or even every few months? Plus you get most of the energy when not needed Summer in the middle of the day and storing it is too expensive to bother with. Have the sheep rustlers moved on to solar panels yet in Wales. Must be easier to catch and more valuable surely. So what does it cost to insure a Ā£10 million wind farm PA for storm, theft, hail, vandalismā¦?
Might Anglesey perhaps not be the best place for them – up North, not much sun, cloudy, wet and often very windy?. What about the Sarah desert?
Loads of wind farms wrecked too by the wind too.
Yet the Zealot Ed Miliband lunacy will doubles continue at pace.
December 10, 2024
Value of electricity (true value before subsidy & market rigging), less interest, less depreciation, less annual storm damage, connection costs, cleaning, maint. = minus what? So why do we subsidise this lunacy Ed?
December 10, 2024
He Is busy trying to implement other subsidies at the moment. There is the Clean Industry Bonus for the AR 7 CFD round that I doubt whether even his civil servants understand exactly how it is supposed to work: the draft contract says it will be paid sometime before the fourth anniversary of the CFD Start Date on a basis to be determined by the LCCC. The budget for this is Ā£27m per GW of CFD applications (not awarded capacity, or target capacity) for offshore and floating wind. “The minimum standard applicable to an eligible generatorās project will be calculated on the basis of the capacity per MW/h of the projected CfD unit to be entered into a CfD
application.” A nonsense word salad that even Kamala would struggle to improve upon.
Then there is the effort to design schemes to subsidise the use of hydrogen for power generation. The penny simply hasn’t dropped that this is a completely unaffordable idea with end to end costs that are a large multiple of using methane instead.
December 11, 2024
āuse of hydrogen for power generationā Surely they mean the use of energy to create hydrogen. We have no hydrogen mines sitting waiting to to burned to produce electricity. Hydrogen is just one (very inefficient and energy wasteful) way to store energy.
December 11, 2024
We already have the HAR1 that will pay over Ā£240/MWh for producing small quantities of hydrogen at a cost of some Ā£2bn in subsidies.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hydrogen-production-business-model-net-zero-hydrogen-fund-shortlisted-projects/hydrogen-production-business-model-net-zero-hydrogen-fund-har1-successful-projects
H2P is about the subsidy mechanisms for burning that and more to make electricity.
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/hydrogen-to-power-market-intervention-need-and-design
December 11, 2024
Exactly. Who decides what is a positive output and what is waste? Much that is counted as positive output is not a benefit to UK but either a waste or an actual harm. Mass immigration and illegal immigration spring to mind along with DEI, Woke policing and climate change/ green energy.
December 10, 2024
12. Stop doing the very many things that do net harm, fire the people doing these things releasing them to do something productive in the private sector.
13. Cut 95% of red tape so fewer people in both private and state sectors have to do parasitic things.
The complete reverse of the Labour and Con-socialist agenda.
I caught up on Farage on Question Time he was against two labour people, the lefty chairwoman and the Con-Socialist Kevin Hollinrake. Two language graduates, one PPE and Hollinrake who dropped out of some Physics degree at some Poly. All telling us about energy. Only Farage (no degree) was talking sense. Though he thought modular nuclear was the way to go as is currently fashionable. Modular can have their place (on submarines for example) but well designed large nuclear ones are cheaper per MWH, more efficient in fuel use, safer and more easily protected if designed and managed properly.
Just get all the legal obstacles and politicians out of the way and manage the design properly using decent engineers and physicists suitable rewarded for good performance.
December 10, 2024
It’s hard to accept that the present administration are in fact trying to keep our energy costs higher than needed; but they are, for their own dogmatic reasons of following NZ. We could have so much cheaper gas IF we wanted to get it, but Milibrain doesn’t want it and therefore any ‘common sense’ ideas will be ignored.
Look at this chart of US natural gas price vs European price. There’s the evidence.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/673333/monthly-prices-for-natural-gas-in-the-united-states-and-europe/
December 11, 2024
Indeed they are.
December 11, 2024
Not just dogmatic reasons to try and deliver Net Zero, higher energy prices make people reduce their energy use. We are already experiencing energy rationing … by ability to pay. Of course that doesn’t apply to MPs who can claim the full costs of their energy use at one of their properties … the bigger, more expensive one, of course.
December 10, 2024
Or simply get rid of workers. I’m sure there are Government activities going on that could just stop. Why have an Arts Council (people will pay for the activities they want to see), or OFSTED (school standards haven’t really improved since they were set up) or most of the other oversight Quangos – OFWAT, etc.
December 10, 2024
Agree – We’d survive without any quango
December 10, 2024
Don’t the Arts Council spend the National Lottery funding?
Someone has to choose which of the 1000s of projects are viable and entertain sufficient people to benefit.
December 10, 2024
No pay higher than a minister
December 10, 2024
Gas and nuclear supplying 61.5% of generation today. Where does the clown Milibrain plan to replace this generation. I see the Anglesey solar farm has taken a battering after only 2 years plus a windmill has aged it’s blades. We’re doomed i tell yer, doomed.
December 10, 2024
..and we could have very very cheap fracking shale gas providing the other 38.5% …Guaranteed Supply
December 10, 2024
Gas and nuclear supplying 71.6% of generation tonight 9pm
December 9, 2024
A problem is, that a lot of these approaches reduce the status – and promotion prospects – of departmental heads who, therefore, have every incentive to drag their heels hoping for a change of policy/government and little incentive to promulgate them.
A well run organisation can fight it’s way through but we are talking the Civil Service here.
How can we make reducing their empire attractive to manderins?
December 10, 2024
All the incentives are for them to spend their annual budget so it doesn’t get decreased so the Minister can justify demanding more.
They need to be incentivised to reduce their spend and rewarded when they do. For a start, no “gongs” for any Mandarin who doesn’t reduce their departmental spending.
December 10, 2024
The withholdings gongs ploy did yield Jim Hacker some temporary, limited success but recall when he demanded a reduction in administrative staff numbers Sir Humphrey achieved that by redesignating computing staff from administrative to technical while headcount was unaffected. It would take an astute Minister to succeed.
December 10, 2024
The denouement of that episode ( which I watched on my DVDs just recently) was that an new emplty hospital with full administrative staffing, but no medical staff or patients, was to be repurposed to house 1,000 Cuban refugees in its beds, thus keeping the staff employed and the unions from striking. Episode 1, Series 2. What amazing foresight by Anthony Jay and Johnathan Lynn.
December 10, 2024
All those people in government who pushed & coerced the Covid vaccines into people (even people with no need of the vaccine even had they been safe and effective) and suppressed the truth about their lack of safety and effectivity did huge net harm. Many people in government and in the Commons & Lords still trying to hide and lie about the very depressing all too clear statistics on this. How much would they all have to repay? Or perhaps they should just be charged with their crimes.
Let us hope Trump and his team exposes the truth on this vile scandal.
December 10, 2024
You beat me to it, Observer.
Is it true that Managers get higher status and pay the more staff they manage? Do they get wage reductions if they have to use the department budget for consultants?
December 9, 2024
Dear Sir John, to boost productivity you need to fire a large number of people so the employees realise that they are working on behalf of the taxpayers and not against the interests of the elected government and the wishes of the people. To achieve this it would probably make sense for every employee to have to re-apply for their roles, whereupon they have to sign into a contract that outlines the key principles above and if they cannot sign it they are let go. And if they are caught breaching it in the future, they are dismissed.
December 9, 2024
And:
11. Supply chain management: Leverage towards boilerplate standard contracts for economies of scale savings. Have contract SLA/KPI measures to enable bonus for overperformance and clawback for underperformance.
12:Performance management of staff: Ensure proper suportive processes to overcome poor staff performance by necessary re-training, backed with demotion or exit.
13. Use COTS Commercially Off the Shelf IT systems/applications; avoid bespoke developments which are costly and difficult to maintain, especially with integration to other IT systems. Adopt formal EA Enterprise Architecture standards.
December 10, 2024
Elon Musk has discovered the Fed Gvt spends 80% of its annual $100bn IT budget just on maintaining outdated systems. It will be interesting to see if Musk can ‘clean up this humongous mess.’
It seems easier to clean up problem IT than laying off unionised staff.
December 9, 2024
At local authority level there could be greater use of volunteers (eg park maintenance) rather than employing staff – this would not only reduce costs but also improve people’s outlook on life through community engagement. I know of a local authority where this is happening.
I am also aware of people moving from teaching in state schools to private schools due to feeling ground down by the amount of paperwork needing to be completed by teachers in state schools. I have also seen high quality fund managers ceasing to operate as FCA regulated individuals because they could no longer stand the time spent on complying with the FCA’s compliance regime.
I believe that as a country the UK wastes a huge amount of resource through regulations being set by people with no in depth experience of the activity being regulated and who innately distrust the people being regulated.
December 10, 2024
Each community gets community punishment workers for free, which could quadruple the worth and value of the single park keeper the Council can afford to pay.
McDonalds and other fast food providers whose litter is regularly found in the verges should charge 5p on each sale to clean the verges themselves. There is one piece of road near me from roundabout to roundabout where it seems people eat in their cars, turn out of the car park (where there are bins), and just throw their waste into the verge on the left (which suggests a passenger is doing it). McDonalds should either fund a CCTV camera on that stretch for fines or clean it up. Or, as someone suggested, print car reg on drive-through order bags.
December 10, 2024
‘At local authority level there could be greater use of volunteers’ – this is fantasy.
We’ve created a dog-eat-dog world where it’s each man for himself. This is an important reason why our Western economy is in trouble. You have to have a certain amount of good will and cooperation in capitalism for it to work. And decent jobs (i.e. manufacturing high quality tech / car brands) for being to get interested in their work and loyal to the company they work for.
Also, another problem with this dog-eat-dog world is that millions of people are suffering from low-grade depression, leading to divorce and or unhappy families and people drinking too much and addictions in general – leading to lower productivity and huge health problems costing the NHS zillions of pounds etc.
The economy has to be supported by a culture with values that is like fertiliser towards the economy – instead of poison.
Life was hard in the past but people had far more values – whether working class, middle class or upper class – than today.
December 10, 2024
‘In the 12 months to Jun 2024, 73,425 offenders were sentenced to community sentence.’ Justice UK
The hours of community punishment work don’t seem to match the cost and severity of their crime. As most can’t afford to make financial repayments, work orders seem more appropriate. I would start in our underpasses, give them shovels, and grabbers to pick up all the leaves that have blocked the drains. clean out the mud from the drainage channels, freeing up these safe routes for school children who otherwise have to walk miles out of their way to go to school. They should keep on top of graffiti, cut back shrubs and wash the entry and exit points.
Many road signs need green moss removed, and the grass growing up the posts needs to be cut and removed.
Depending on their crime, they could be allocated to schools (at the weekend) and hospitals to clear up litter, tidy up play areas, fix fences and repair gaps, help deliver drinks and food, clean up pots, and clean toilets and shower bays.
December 10, 2024
No. Authoritarianism doesn’t work!
And you won’t get the voters to support it anyway.
If you want to firm people up then re-introduce National Service (like in Sweden and other countries).
Even if just for a few months. Make a big difference.
And to try and instil more traditional Conservative values into people – into the churches, media, those in education and the arts (not easy I know). That would make a huge difference. Where people are acting from their own WISDOM instead of authoritarian fear (plus that won’t win the support of enough voters). Also, as we know from history, authoritarian regimes are so often corrupt and / or turn corrupt.
At end of day, if we want a strong, stable economy, with high productivity, loyal and highly-skilled British workers, ad strong brands that we export, then we have to balance the tension between healthy competitive spirit and benign cooperation with others too (in capitalist work sense not in socialist sense). Not easy. Go too far in one direction, and you just get dog-eats-dog. Go in the other direction, and you just get touchy-feely wetness. Both scenarios eventually are a huge burden on the taxpayer in one way or the other.
December 10, 2024
See Edward Luttwak’s 1999 “Turbo-Capitalism-Winners and Losers in the Global Economy”.
( Required reading for those who keep wittering on about Marxism/communism/etc)
December 10, 2024
Interesting news item in the Gold Telegraph,via Bloomberg,9/12/24:
“BREAKING NEWS:The Bank of England will hide the identities of any pension funds,insurers or hedge funds bailed out under a new financial stability tool.The Bank of England fears stigma would worsen financial instability.”
Whatever it takes to keep the ponzi going!
December 10, 2024
Plus one
December 10, 2024
Good morning.
I the USA some companies have a rule where, every year they dismiss the bottom 10% of sales people – Economic Natural Selection.
Perhaps it is time to do something similar to the Private Sector ? Dismiss the bottom 10% of all CEO’s at NHS Hospitals for example may very well boost productivity. Dismissing 10% of the bottom 10% of Senior Civil Serpents will most definatly improve productivity.
We do not need to go full Stalin, but you have to confess, despite all his faults he sure well knew how to motivate and get the best from what little he left behind. If you know what I mean ? š
December 10, 2024
Sorry, should read – Public Sector, not Private Sector.
I am only on my second coffee this morning.
December 10, 2024
and we should ban Civil Servants ‘coffee breaks’ ha ha .
December 10, 2024
Well first dismiss the circa 50% doing net harm perhaps?
December 10, 2024
A brutal suggestion with some merit. Accepting the contined existence of the public sector as is, I mighf opt for Kaizen, the japanese system to achieve continual improvement. It works for Japan, but consider my more radical approach when moderated.
December 10, 2024
Yes that’s what some USA companies do. It would fall foul of UK employment law.
December 10, 2024
Naming and shaming would be a good start. Let’s start with the bottom 5%.
December 10, 2024
You suggest ways to improve the current civil service. I question whether we have the right basis for the provision of government services and therefore if we should persist in fine tuning what we currently have to a state of utopian perfection. In a sense it is as flawed an aim as nett zero.
The only creators of wealth, be it individual, corporate, or national is private enterprise large and small. We tax it to spend, largely on government services that cannot in themselves produce a direct profit. Why not consider using that taxation initially as a national wealth fund. Managed by professionals, audited by professionals to maximise income. We could use the enterprise of the whole World in a positive none predatory way, much as we used empire in a less benevolent way in the nineteenth century. Put simply we would be plugging in to a World grid of enterprise.
From that vast investment we produce income to pay for defense, health, education, the real needy, and our collapsed infrastructure. The changeover would of necessity need to be structured, not being possible overnight, but think about it.
The potential is to largely rid ourselves of the vast unproductive civil servics, because the vital services could largely be privatised and forced to compete just like supermarkets. As it happens, defence has always been down to private providers. It is the sea anchor of civil service government that drags it into high cost inefficiency.
Well there is some latteral thinking to get your heads round, but when you do, remember, the challenge is to come up with something even better, rather than say it cannot be done.
December 10, 2024
I’m not sure agricola.
The passport office, DVLA, should be able to give a return to the taxpayer to cover all their costs and full pension contribution; they charge enough.
The probate dept must cover all its costs in full as they indeed take enough.
December 10, 2024
Too many bossy individuals who slow systems down enforcing rules which don’t apply in all cases due to lack of understanding.
December 10, 2024
President Milei in Argentina has been doing many things in his first year, including improving public sector efficiency.
Apart from direct layoffs, recruitment freezes, wholesale closure of Ministries etc a very big part of the process has been indirect, via deregulation.
Some of this has been direct scrapping or modification of regulation (672 in the first year). Some has been procedural:
“Milei has instituted a āpositive administrative silenceā rule affecting numerous activities by which a requested permission is considered approved if the government bureaucracy does not respond to the request within a determined period of time.” (Cato Institute).
Clever stuff. Imagine applying that here, allied to a recruitment freeze.
December 10, 2024
The problem with (1) Recruitment freeze is that most people who voluntarily leave the Civil Service do so because they are employable in the private sector (and can’t stand the nonsense any more) or they retire.
Within the CS it is well known that the easiest way of ridding your team/dept of a liability is to get them moved into another role elsewhere since it is virtually impossible to get rid of a poor performer any other way.
I’m not sure relying on internal transfers is going to improve productivity. Ridding the CS of poor performers; recruiting decent managers from the private sector; dropping the “woke” nonsense which pervades throughout the CS and Public Sector Union reform might.
But I can’t see any of that happening any time soon.
December 10, 2024
On 5, is there any evidence from anywhere in the world that a move to home working increases productivity ? There only seem to be inconclusive academic studies that indicate workers say it does make them more productive and bosses say the opposite. This should be properly studied on a case-by-case basis and if it is found it makes workers less production then home working should be stopped. Reducing office space in advance of the conclusion of such studies would be a mistake and simply bake-in lower productivity.
December 10, 2024
Neither Iran, nor Russia were able to intervene in Syria to support the cruel Bashar al-Assad dictatorship. Both regimes have been severely weakened by rashly starting wars against proud, independent and democratic countries determined to fight for their independence.
In my view the correct strategy now is to force the advantage. Ukraine is – at last – receiving a sufficiently large amount of lethal aid from the Biden administration to contemplate throwing the Russian hordes back. Russia is now economically weak and after taking hundreds of thousands of casualties, Putin has been forced station 12,000 N Korean troops behind their lines – less than 150km from Moscow – doubtless to prevent a retreat without orders of the battered Russian conscript army.
Israel has shown that it has good intelligence on the Ayatollah’s nuclear program and can penetrate Iran air defences at will; the IAF is now regularly patrolling western Iran and the Natanz and Fordrow nuclear complexes.
There will never be a better time to destroy Iran’s nascent nuclear bomb capability. The West must deal with the Iran nuclear threat and ensure Israel’s security before facing down China over Taiwan independence
December 10, 2024
I believe the topic of todays discussion is, “A toolkit to boost public service productivity”, and not Ukraine or Syria.
December 10, 2024
In the case of the shocking delays at the Probate Office (as well as the administrative functions of the civil courts, the employment tribunal service and so on), something else is needed beyond the above 10 recommendations, given that the problem is one of dismally slow processing of ongoing matters. We find ourselves back with our old friend, performance management, and the need for effective sanctions if performance has not improved in a tangible manner by a specific date. For want of a better description, it calls for a Lord Sugar mindset from seniors, who ought themselves to be removed if they cannot manage productivity properly.
December 10, 2024
Performance indicators are never a good method of improving matters.Tick boxes are ticked for the sake of so called evidence with no quality and depth of service behind the assertion.Furthermore the evidence is lifted to compile stats which do not reflect the truth.
December 10, 2024
One well known US software company allegedly did this with the bottom 5% each year. A company I worked for did not have a set percentage target but we still operated a firm policy that did not delay management of poor performers.
At the very least there needs to be proper objective setting and peer reviews followed by a fair process and letting go of the poor performers at the appropriate “pace”.
You do need to set an example and it is usually best to start at the top – I agree with your culling the worst of the “best”, ie most senior.
December 10, 2024
A major component of private sector productivity is competition in an open-ish market, how do you suggest this could be implemented in the public sector?
Or, is it really a waste of time attempting to improve productivity in-place and go gang busters on contracting out and your points 4, 9 and 10.
How would this work effectively with large scale issues such as the NHS considering the poor performance of the HS2 project.
December 10, 2024
Getting productivity out of the public sector requires strong leadership, and you won’t get that from the shower in government.
The best thing to do is reduce the amount government does. Relieve the NHS of the obligation of treating lifestyle diseases, put the support of asylum seekers into the voluntary sector, tell local government they are no longer obliged to provide care home services for people who spent all the money they had and didn’t put by for their old age.
Shrink the bloated state, and with the savings abolish employer’s NI, which will help British business be more competitive in world markets.
December 10, 2024
The NHS is improving at treating conditions with lower-grade staff instead of GPs, e.g., diabetes support and check-ups, blood pressure checks, and the phlebotomist doing checks and giving vax during the same appointment as taking blood. Women’s clinics doing all smears, hrt, fertility assistance, bladder problems, bone health and contraceptive checkups are more often done by pharmacists now rather than by the GP as they used to do.
Children’s clinics for vaccinations, health checks, feeding advice, development reviews etc.
Men’s health medical staff check prostate screening and do risk assessments, and initial poo sample bowel checks are done externally by post.
It is A&E and out-of-hours, often connected to A&E walk-in clinics that need help reorganising as soon as possible, clearing people faster with minor ailments, and performing procedures that can be checked and performed quickly by a specific team instead of leaving those people until last when more and more higher-grade patients arrive.
December 10, 2024
1) is a cop out necessitated by unionisation. In reality any organisation, including those in the public sector, needs to be able to recruit, sometimes for specialist capabilities, and in general to ensure a new influx for the future. But to keep numbers down that means biting the bullet and making unproductive people redundant. The simplest way to do this given employment law is to close organisations. Quangos are the place to start for this. The climate change committee, the environment agency etc. few if any of these existed pre-Blair. Take their responsibilities back to civil servants working for ministers answerable to parliament. And save costs at the same time.
December 10, 2024
The unions should start by paying for their own pilgrims, instead this government has given them extra powers and put costs back onto the NHS. In July almost 23,592 public sector workers were ‘moonlighting’ as tu reps reported the Taxpayers Alliance. Over Ā£100m paid by the users of the service rather than the staff they support from their subs.
December 10, 2024
Interesting stat
December 10, 2024
It’s about being able to see through the ‘noise’. Very hard when everything is failing around you, always easier in retrospect. I believe in Pareto – 80/20 rules just about everything.
So decide what your core objectives are, review the distribution of resources (funding, management, manpower) that are allocated to those objectives, rebalance them and then ruthlessly discard everything that is unnecessary.
Take care not to throw any ‘babies’ out with the bath water.
You probably won’t be liked, loved or thanked but (if successful) you may be respected.
Can the Civil Service do this? That’s not really the question. Do they even want to try is really the problem.
December 10, 2024
Step 1 – Make 400,00 Civil Servants redundant, save Ā£17 billion a year, plus vastly reduce future pension costs.
Step 2 – Accept the Union will call a strike, so manage with the 50 to 60,000 who still come in to work.
Step 3 – make another 70,000 redundant ( 530,000 – 400,000, then – 70,000 =. 60,000 left )
Step 4 – Any re-employed are put on money purchase pensions, as in the private sector, not final salary, inflation proofed.
Step 5 – Insist all work in the office 5 days a week.
Step 6 – What can’t be handled by the remaining 50 to 60,000 the government stops doing!
Step 7 – No consultants employed. If we need consultants, we don’t have the right calibre of Civil Servants.
Step 8 – With fewer Civil Servants, the Government has to do less and stop trying to run our lives.
December 10, 2024
No more ‘working from home’
December 10, 2024
Without wishing to be critical of our host, because I admire his constant battle to make HMG choose a wiser economic path, but we have moved well beyond the point where normal sensible measures can be argued for.
Those in charge are not listening. They are too busy implement the steps of ABSOLUTE ZERO to concern themselves about our health or the crashing economy.
I’d much rather we argued against the individual steps of this destructive program to show the folly behind the perverted logic. For example, the document says;
That is just wishful thinking based on hot air, but I’m sure if we tried we could show exactly why it will fail!
December 10, 2024
The Renewable Energy lunacy has just taken a severe hit, thanks to Storm Darragh. Perhaps that’s what they mean by “renewable” … every time there’s a storm we have to renew thousands of shattered solar panels?
“the UKās largest solar farm lies in tatters today, thanks to the battering winds of Storm Darragh.
The colossal 190-acre Porth Wen solar site on Anglesey, North Wales, now looks more like a scrapyard than a power plant. Hundreds of panels, painstakingly installed just two years ago, have been torn from their mountings, with some shredded to pieces. The stormās fury has left the Llanbadrig site, owned by French energy giant EDF, needing major repairs. Worse still, the chaos has plunged thousands of homes in Wales into darknessā9,500 households who depended on the solar farm for power now face uncertainty.”
December 10, 2024
So much for the opportunities that netzero will bring us.
Weren’t the EDF adverts telling us they ‘ had it all in hand’?
Looks like they’ve dropped the ball
December 10, 2024
Wind didn’t keep the lights on, another point to make on vulnerabilities.
December 10, 2024
11) Stop wasting money.
Donāt send 470 people to a COP conference.
Donāt spend Ā£75 million on a ceremony to put a crown on a manās head.
Donāt spend Ā£15 million on a building the vendor paid Ā£6 million for the year before – a building which turns out to be full of asbestos.
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.
December 10, 2024
Good post.
I would add that there needs to be a way of reducing absences by a mixture of incentives and dis-incentives.
I don’t think the taxpayer should be expected to pay people who do not turn up to work.
December 10, 2024
There is absolutely no chance of boosting public service productivity whilst the Uniparty rules Parliament. The big let-down was the Conservative Party section who succumbed to Robert Conquestās second and third laws of politics:
– āAny organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.ā
– āThe simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it led by a cabal of its enemies.ā
December 10, 2024
It would be useful to know how many “public service” people are employed on delivering Net Zero.
December 10, 2024
“3. Rule against both employing staff to do a job and employing consultants to do the work for them, Consultants should only be used where the state lacks expertise”.
I know from personal contracting self employed experience that you are brought in to solve a problem, find many other issues that needed fixing and then the employed staff take the credit for your work, even plagiarizing your final report….
Duplication sadly exists but goes on because of the historic way budgets are set in the backwaters of central and local gov e.g. Last year’s budget + 10%
December 10, 2024
plus if it goes pear-shaped in the eyes of management, the finger of blame is pointed at …..the Contractor!
December 10, 2024
Looks like there’s another Ā£11m out of the kitty with what looks like our leader’s very efficient & speedy decision to provide assistance to Syria after the fall of the regime. How difficult was that !
December 10, 2024
There is nothing on this list that a well run private company would not be doing without even thinking about it !
It shows just how far behind the times the public sector really is. It should not be necessary for our host to be telling his party such basic facts after 14 years in power !
Should we really be surprised at how the government machine is run, given that almost no civil servants have ever worked in the private sector and almost none of their current supposed masters in Parliament have either !
In 14 years, the Conservatives had every opportunity to totally reform the public sector but they singularly failed in the most spectacular way. The make up of the current parliamentary party doesn’t even have anyone like our host or JR-M to urge them to change course.
Is it any wonder that so many previously-loyal Conservatives like me have moved over to supporting Reform ?
If you still have any doubts, ask yourselves, could Nigel’s lot possibly do any worse. Well, could they ?
December 10, 2024
ChrisS
+1
December 10, 2024
I’m afraid this article spells out in detail the mess we’re in. Boosting public sector productivity is a secondary problem.
https://conservativepost.co.uk/story-of-the-century-flawed-migration-policies-to-cost-the-uk-government-a-trillion-pounds-a-year/
December 10, 2024
Starmer could send his new head of the civil service a New Year message :
There will be a total recruitment freeze and that by 5th April 2026 he has to reduce employee numbers to, at the very most, the numbers that were employed before the pandemic.
No ifs, or buts, reduce the numbers to that level by 5th April 2026, or he and his top team will join the dole queue themselves on the 6th. If they survive, they can then start over again to get the numbers down a lot further.
15% each year should be achievable with modernisation and AI.
There will be a strike, of course, so at the same time enforce a switch to a Defined Contribution pension scheme.
These measures would at last put a brake on public spending.
December 10, 2024
Chriss, You say there will be a strike, would anybody notice
December 10, 2024
Nobody would notice, that’s why we should get rid of Final Salary Pensions at the same time.
December 10, 2024
Would it always be helpful to eschew external consultants when often enough they are used to (i) voice discomforting truths on behalf of managers seeking change to resistant colleagues who require the authentication provided by a supposedly independent, credible, authoritative source and (ii) undertake the work of making changes that employees, fully engaged in their regular work, have not the time and perhaps not the expertise to undertake?
I would suggest more use of temporary employment contracts but understand HMRC makes very full use of those at present with an alleged consequence that disengagement is rife.
Reading recently about Disraeli, I came across a quote from Salisbury (3rd., Marquess) that said: –
“No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by the experience of life as that you never should trust experts. If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome: if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent,: if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe”.
If only Boris had spent more time learning from his predecessors and less time eating cake!
December 10, 2024
Off Topic…a little bit.
BBC Politics.
A government department spent almost Ā£1,200 of taxpayers’ money on two ministerial folders, official figures show, external. It came as Chancellor Rachel Reeves launched a crackdown on government waste.
The Department for Culture Media and Sport bought the folders from luxury leather goods manufacturer Barrow Hepburn & Gale, at a cost of Ā£594 each.
Other government departments routinely buy the same folders, and ministerial red boxes, from the company, which also supplies the Royal Family.
Leather-bound document holders are available in the House of Commons shop for Ā£30.
But sources suggest the extra expense is justified to enhance the image of the government.
Rachel Reeves – who also uses a Barrow Hepburn & Gale red box and folders – has ordered government departments to show how they can make annual savings of 5%.
The DCMS spending on the folders was dated 29 October – the day before Reeves’s first Budget – and details were revealed as the chancellor set out the next phase of her spending review.
December 11, 2024
It rather depends on how productivity is measured. Much expenditure is simply not needed at all: there are few or no real benefits. The state does too much. Much ‘output’ which counts positively towards productivity should be reclassified as waste, particularly that associated with supposed social benefits that actually encourage worklessness or that benefit only illegal or low skilled immigrants who should not even be in the UK. There are whole public sector programmes that should simply be axed totally: climate change/green energy, HS2, DEI to name a few.
This point is confusing: “5. Reduce office space for home working, with more hot desking.”
Home working can be used in conjunction with hot desking to reduce office space and hence overheads. Some individual activities are better done away from the distractions in the office – the pointless indecisive meetings, chats around the kettle about boyfriends or the latest TV programme, political discussions; long lunches, etc. Not everyone works in teams requiring continual interaction. Some work alone or work best alone. Home working has become political because it has been abused. It is up to employers including in the public sector, to sort it out. The politics must be removed from it. Apply competition and other incentives to reduce waste, increase efficiency, quality and output.