The public sector is around 10 % less productive than in 2019. There has been a big expansion of staffing in the civil service and public sector administration despite more spending on computerisation. The Treasury suggest this is a loss of around Ā£24 bn.
I looked at ways of getting this loss back. The government suggests spending more on AI might help. Ā Getting back to 2019 levels of output does not need AI as there was no AI in 2019.
The government needs to introduce an immediate recruitment freeze. As people leave the service posts needs to be amalgamated or abolished. People should be promoted on merit to bigger roles.
The state where it is appointing people to highly paid roles like the Head of the Post Office, HS2 or the Bank of England should earn most of the high pay as bonus, only paid if they deliver. The Head of the Post Office should deliver profits, Ā it losses. HS2 should be on time and to budget. The Bank should deliver 2% inflation.
People in the civil service should stay to see projects through or to undertake a role Ā for long enough to do it well and repay the state for the training and experience.
The public sector should run quality systems, treat complaints seriously and manage out mistakes.
January 25, 2025
Sir John, You should look at the NHS as well where many Trust Boards are hiring COOs and Directors of Strategy What are these people supposed to be doing apart from occupying space, taking large 6 figure salaries and not doing anything useful ?
January 25, 2025
Delivering a net zero NHS
For the emissions we can influence (our NHS Carbon Footprint Plus), we will reach net zero by 2045, with an ambition to reach an 80% reduction by 2036 to 2039.
Ditch this and use the money for reducing the extensive negligence in maternity departments that kill and brain damage so many. Release the clearly unsafely convicted Lucy Letby and use the Ā£2 million saved on her prison costs to this end too perhaps?
January 25, 2025
Of course this investment would more than pay for itself anyway as looking after brain damaged children (resulting from poor maternity care) for a life time cost very many millions more than providing decent care in the first place.
January 25, 2025
@David Peddy – The NHS the easiest Industry to privatize, as there are numerous outlets for their services that are positioned to compete with one and other.
January 25, 2025
When you say “The public sector is around 10 % less productive than in 2019.” do you deduct the harm the state sector does from the value of he few positive services they deliver. I suspect overall they take 45% of GDP in taxes and borrowing and produce a net negative after all the inconvenience they cause to the productive with moronic red tape, absurdly complex tax system, bus lane, ULEZ and motorist mugging policies, the absurd Energy Performance Certificates, Net Zero, the OTT health and safely, EDI… first stop all the millions of negative outputs from the state sector and release these people (and those in the private sector inconveniences) to do productive work instead. Just this would increase UK productivity hugely.
Trump put all US government DEI staff on paid leave ‘immediately’ we should go better and fire them all and do this to all the net zero vandals, motorist muggers… too.
The other thing we should do is have free markets and fare competition in energy, education, housing, transport… not state rigged virtual monopolies. We have a Competition Act and Competition and Markets Authority but they never address the blatantly unfair competition from the state sector. We tax people so much that most have no choice but to use state schools, state health care… so we get no real competition and v. little innovation.
January 25, 2025
Blair appalling devolution hugely decreases state sector productivity too. As did all the Mayor’s and their many overpaid minions. Sadiq Kahn is truly appalling. Crime in London – murders, knifings, shop lifting, muggings and phone snatching… is totally our of control compared to 15 years about when I lived there. Whenever I go to London I nearly always see some incident or other. Policing seems to be virtually invisible other than near the House of Commons or Buckingham Palace.
January 25, 2025
@Lifelogic +1 – does anyone believe what Reeves intimated in her WEF speech echoing Trump, that NetZero should not get in the way of the economy and growth?
January 25, 2025
Sure energy are three to four times the cost and intermittent is obviously great for growth and our ability to complete Rachael. Perhaps she can explain by what mechanism this works. Also why did she call her anti-growth budget a budget for growth? Was is sarcasm or a sick joke dear?
January 25, 2025
Did Reeves say that? Not exactly. She said āThe pursuit of growth ātrumpsā the net zero commitmentsā when asked about airport extension, and āFor a long time when there was a choice between something that would grow the economy and anything else, anything else always won. If (growth) is the number one mission, it is obviously the most important missionā.
FT.com 22/01/2025 āRachel Reeves says growth trumps net zero as Heathrow runway decision loomsā.
Do not forget that B.Johnson āI will lie down in front of those bulldozers and stop the construction of that third runwayā Uxbridge, May 2015 (still available on Facebook and others).
January 25, 2025
@hefner – the word used was intimated, the media took it a stage further I did not
January 25, 2025
Fair enough. Sorry.
January 25, 2025
Indeed Boris, Cameron, Sunak, May and Kemi all backed and still back the net zero lunacy too. Any new runways will not happen or will not happen for 15+ years. So aircraft will continue wasting fuel sitting at the end of the inadequate runways or flying round in holding loops for years to come as they have been for over 20 years already.
January 25, 2025
Sensible speech yesterday in your usual gentle and under stated way. Alas zero chance of this government doing anything sensible. The blame for us suffering Starmer’s Labour however lies with the 14 years of Con-Socialist manifesto betrayals, their mad net zero agenda plus they got almost everything single thing wrong with Covid (lockdowns, masks, net harm vaccines, vast borrowings nearly all wasted…)
Even now the almost invisible Kemi is little different from Sunak on net zero and indeed most things. Just a Starmer light with a touch on the brakes really over the cliff but a bit more slowly agenda.
January 25, 2025
LL, +++++++
January 25, 2025
The Public Sector is a self serving entity. It has a captive audience and doesn’t need to provide quality outcomes.
Pensions and salaries are guaranteed and there is no punishment for failure. The vast majority think it’s their right to work from home. The private sector has long since shaken off Covid attitudes but the PS has doubled down on them.
Until proper working practices are reintroduced nothing will change.
January 25, 2025
I am generally against capital. Far too many innocent people convicted on lies, irrational emotion and duff or dishonest evidence (or virtually no evidence as with Lucy Letby) by our rather poor legal system. But in the case of the Southport murderer, where there is zero doubt of guilt the case for it is surely very strong indeed. No doubt that he did it, he pleaded guilty even saying he was glad they were dead. The Ā£3 million plus cost of prison might easily save circa 30+ lives of other children if spend well (on say better maternity care) and if would actually probably be better – even for the murderer himself.
January 25, 2025
Capital “Punishment” that is !
January 25, 2025
Oh they will be inconveniencing the medical front line staff with questionairs etc. and the ordering things like electric ambulances and employing lots of lawyer to try to evade the thousand of negligence claims. The ones from negligent maternity care can cost many millions per brain damaged child, Compensation for the (criminal in my view) net harm Covid Vaccines (even pushed at young people and people who already had had Covid (who had no need of them even had they been safe and effective) really should come to over Ā£10 billion but they will not be properly compensated they will be cheated like the post office people are still being.
Not just the MRNA vaccines we the Daily T. podcast on the Asta Zenica blood clot issue parts 1 and 2. Very slow to withdraw this net (surely harm vaccine) too even after the issues were pointed out convincingly to the regulators (v early evidence in Japan and some other countries.)
January 25, 2025
Covid Vaccine Adverse Reaction and Bereaved Groups Dr. John Campbell with
Anna Morris KC, representing some Covid Vaccine Adverse Reaction and Bereaved Groups. Worth watching too.
January 25, 2025
Yes to all that SJR. However, as nobody in government has run a welk stall, your chances of achieving greater productivity are zero.
January 25, 2025
Having said my bit on productivity in the public sector, I prefer to concentrate on the iniquity of IHT. It is a tax on what an individual has already created through varied investment, from income thaf has already been taxed. It is double jeopody.
It’s impact on farming will be disasterous to food supply in the UK , and make us strategically very vulnerable. It also impacts negatively on an enterprise society across their endeavours. For all the benefit its removal from the UK tax book would be to the economy, it would only cost around Ā£6 Bn. Peanuts against public sector waste and gross inefficiency.
January 25, 2025
Indeed it will. 45% income tax and 40% IHT can easily take away 90% of your capital off you over circa 25 years reducing your 10% return to 5.5% and then 40% more on death. Who needs wealth taxes too? You get 10% the Government take 90%. Come to the UK invest you Ā£10million here and turn it into Ā£100 million over 25 years (without tax) but with tax Ā£10 million for you Ā£90 million for the government for doing nothing. A great offer Racheal!
Make 10% PA just to stand still, Might as well not bother working and just keep a block of gold in the garden.
January 25, 2025
Is there any evidence that spending on computerisation in the state sector increases productivity ? The NHS is notorious for catastrophically bad IT projects that donāt. In all his waffle on AI Starmer didnāt point out that the most tangible benefit of applying AI in the state sector would be due to savings on staff – he knows his union mates wonāt allow that.
January 25, 2025
Many are impressed by the speed at which Trump has organised the deportation of undocumented migrants who have illegally entered America under the inept Biden regime.
Here is a simple lesson for the new Labour Home Secretary. She should ignore the ECHR, identify and round up the 2.5 million illegal migrants who have managed to get in here in recent years and deport them. Getting these people off the benefits system and away from the NHS will save Reeves Ā£billions
January 25, 2025
Lots of “shoulds” there Sir John.
A recruitment freeze and relying on people voluntarily leaving the civil service to reduce numbers takes time and the downside is that you will generally be losing those who are capable of working in the private sector and older, experienced staff who reach retirement age. You will be left with less experienced staff and those who are unemployable in the private sector.
To reduce numbers effectively the tasks they are performing need to be audited, streamlined and where possible, eliminated. They should also review the non-productive time spent complying with HR and over-complicated admin procedures. They could make a start by reducing the amount of compulsory “training” (ie woke brainwashing nonsense) and tick-boxing that goes on.
With big infrastructure projects like HS2 there is an incentive for the construction companies bidding to initially under-quote since a high bid is less likely to be accepted. The construction companies all know that once they have the contract they can find reasons to increase the cost of delivery and because of the sunk cost argument, they’ll get away with it. That also suits a Department and politicians (like Adonis) who want a scheme delivered but who don’t dare be honest about the real cost. The solution to that is to make the bids and the construction contract binding with NO wriggle room to increase the cost.
Reply The massive rise in HS 2 budgets occurred long before construction quotes!
January 25, 2025
Wonderful news for consumers struggling to pay their energy bills during the so-far very mild British winter. Miliband has approved the 480MW West Burton solar farm and also the 500MW Heckington Fen Solar Park, which is owned by the green energy business Ecotricity.
Mr Dale Vince, CEO of Ecotricity said in a statement āWeāre delighted that Ecotricity has been granted permission for this major green energy project that will help the country reach its net zero target and create hundreds of jobs. There will also be a significant biodiversity boost across the site.ā
At the end of the solar park’s life, the facility will be dismantled and the land will revert to farmland. Thank goodness the new Labour administration has ignored the usual NIMBY objections and gone for the cheap solar electricity, community orchard and increased biodiversity option
January 25, 2025
Great irony. The long term problem with such solar and wind farm developments is who is going to pay for restoration of the land. I suspect it will be treated as industrial rather countryside.
January 25, 2025
“At the end of the solar parkās life, the facility will be dismantled and the land will revert to farmland”
Would you like a bet on that?
Solar in the UK rarely makes much economic sense as we do not need much electricity in day time summer but need load on cold winter days. Also as we saw in Anglesey they often do not last long enough to pay back and cost a fortune to connect to the grid and back up. They have rigged the market so we get white elephant solar farms all over the place!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14175033/Storm-Darragh-UKs-Biggest-solar-farm-pieces.html
January 25, 2025
Solar is not cheap.
Come on SG get real.
January 25, 2025
Not cheap and not produced when it is needed – in winter or at night.
January 25, 2025
…and all made in china
January 26, 2025
It may however, be a payback for any help and encouragement given to the ‘project’ of the party now in Government ,by the celebrant ?
January 25, 2025
A complete civil service recruitment freeze might prevent rapid improvement, unless some operators already employed there are of adequate quality to lead the others to become efficient teams of achievers.
Fire ALL of the wasters in the civil service promptly, and promote or improve the pay of the high quality performers. The fewer good ones left wonāt recruit more dross.
Wasters can be offered other immediate employment in valid waste services, such as collecting litter.
January 25, 2025
Yes 600,000 added since 2019 thatās more than a 10% yet they are doing close on 10% less. More exaggerated and un-needed costs to the Taxpayer.
The Media today is reporting that the Civil Service is threatening to strike over more pay and the requirement to come into work 2 days a week. But although the problem originated with the last crowd refusing to manage, would Labour sack Labour only voters?
A ‘Milei’ is needed, to sack the lot of them and contract as much possible out to the Private sector on fixed term fixed price contracts. He made an interesting speech at Davos, some misplaced but most on the button – https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/01/23/britain-wrongly-locking-up-people-crimes-immigrants-milei/
January 25, 2025
When you say productivity is 10% lower than in 2019, how are you measuring productivity?
Reply ONS figures for labour productivity
January 25, 2025
All good points, but nobody in government took any notice the last time, or the time before that, when these ideas were put forward.
It will take more than proposed better ways of working to shake this government out of it’s impulsive position on the economy and the destructive netzero.
I cannot see HMG willingly reducing the number of people allegedly working for it, not when they believe so heartily in BIG GOVERNMENT. It makes them feel omni-potent to have so many under their command.
Waste and inefficiency are the names of the games.
January 25, 2025
Interestingly, we hear the real reason for the CAN bill from the horses mouth of the proposer: “….the purpose of the Bill was to align with international commitments.”Ā
So it was never anything to do with ‘saving the Earth faster, IT WAS ALWAYS ABOUT INTERNATIONAL POLITICS.
Or is there another interpretation to be put on international commitments?
January 25, 2025
Like many others, I know some people from the civil service, in Whitehall and elsewhere.
My understanding is the tactics they used with the Conservative government were
1. Leaking stories in their favour to their favourite media (Guardian, BBC etc);
2. Accusing ministers of bullying
3. Delaying tasks either by āforgettingā them or by constantly questioning them and forever asking for more clarifications
4. Moving someone to a different role leaving the new person with an incomplete briefing of outstanding tasks
Some ministers were pilloried in the media when they tried to get some sensible things done. Some ministerial careers were damaged as a result.
The rest of the ministers were cowards and toed the civil service line, leaving us with a useless socialist government.
Ironically, a Labour government with a more accommodating media and more co-operative civil service may actually get better results and perhaps make things a bit more efficient.
In truth, though, we need a proper government in power so we can achieve similar efficiencies as President Trump is going for.
January 25, 2025
āThe public sector is around 10 % less productive than in 2019.ā
It was June 2019 when PM May declared, without a Parliamentary vote or costing, that it would be law for the UK to reach net zero CO2 emissions by 2050. PM Johnson became PM in July 2019 and turbocharging this policy published his 368 page āNet Zero Strategy – Build Back Greenerā in October 2021 in which he wrote on P19 that we will have electricity available āat the flick of a switch from abundant, cheap British renewablesā¦.ā
The BEIS Permanent Secretary at the Public Accounts Committee Meeting on 25/10/2021 āAchieving Net Zero : Follow Upā made it clear that the Net Zero Strategy would have to be rolled out/implemented by all Civil Service departments to comply with the law.
This was followed up by Chris Skidmoreās 340 page Mission Zero review in January 2023.
It would not be a surprise to learn that a large proportion of the 10% reduction in productivity was caused by the Civil service following the climate crisis/Net Zero delusion. It would interesting to know just how many Civil Servants are employed on this futile pursuit.
January 27, 2025
questions-statements.parliament.uk 16/10/2024 āDepartment for Energy Security and Net Zero: Civil Servantsā.
The answer is 4569 people seating on a total of 1688 desks in 16 locations.
January 25, 2025
sack the DEI layers
sack vast numbers of nhs admin layers
sack those in the home office who have allowed immigration to get out of control
sack the police, social services, CPS who have done nothing about gang rape of children
sack the people in the RAF who were admitted in court as discriminating against white people
etc
January 25, 2025
sack the people in the CPS, including the top bod, who think that having a terror training manual, and chemical weapons does not make you a terrorist
January 25, 2025
Another slip in the right direction by the EU, while the BoE starts to make sense.
EPP leaders want to freeze CO2 duty, abolish renewable targets.
ļ»æThe group want to hark back to an era before the 2019 āgreen waveā.
ļ»æ The Bank tells Reeves what to do…. Cut net zero burden to grow economy – It’s not rocket science!
January 25, 2025
Off topic but hot news today –
It appears the ratio of hostage release is 1:25 ā¦religion of peace in action
January 25, 2025
Or another way to comment on the same topic, as of 08/01/2025 1,706 Israeli killed, 45,936 Palestinians killed, a ratio of 1:27. So not so different, donāt you think?
wikipedia āCasualties of the Israel-Hamas warā
January 25, 2025
Private business and many charities have to raise income in order to pay their bills. Staffing and productivity is thus commensurate with the amount of income that can be generated by the number of employees.
Grant funding to NHS and other government and local government sectors guarantees funding so no need for productivity.
Time for the public sector to be paid on outputs and not limp sum funding.
There is a case for pay as you use I would say.
January 25, 2025
The Southport incident last year highlighted the incompetence of the Public Sector and its glaring failures to move with the times sadly. This incident lays bare what is wrong where failsafe thinking and reality are lacking.
January 25, 2025
Sir John,
The majority of workers in the Civil Service are very poorly paid. Here are some figures from GOV.UK. The minimum and maximum figures are not typos. This is what the National Minimum Wage, currently set at Ā£23,492.04, has done to pay scales over the years. It has caused the grades to virtually be paid the same rate so there is little incentive to get promoted or even come off unemployment benefits.
The starting salary for an Administrative Assistant is Ā£23,670 rising to Ā£23,670
The starting salary for an Administrative Officer is Ā£24,040 rising to Ā£24,040
The starting salary for an Executive Officer is Ā£28,300 rising to Ā£31,060
The median salary for Civil Servants is Ā£31,920
When people here say they have gold-plated final salary pension schemes, remember the overall average Civil Service pension in payment is Ā£9,874 a year, well below the basic tax threshold.
Now do you understand why Civil Servants are not motivated? You should be going after the CEO fat cats, not the poor workers.
As the saying goes “Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome”. We live in a country where hard work doesn’t pay and the feckless are better off than the strivers.
January 25, 2025
Christine, your figures fail to tell the full story :
Since before the pandemic, civil service manpower has increased by more than 100,000.
There can be no justification for this.
Productivity has fallen by 20% or more. Again, there is no rational explanation for this.
You fail to contrast CS pay levels with those in the private sector, but to achieve a level playing field, you would need to add the 28% cost of the gold plated CS pension scheme.
Starmer needs to end the nonsense of working from home, have a recruitment and promotion freeze, and replace the CS pension with a defined contribution scheme of the type that is now almost universal in the private sector.
January 25, 2025
There are few offices for these staff to return to. Most have been demolished and replaced by housing estates. Follow the money. Was this the plan of the pandemic all along or just a bonus for the party political donors?
My point is that the majority of civil servants earn barely above the minimum wage. Even if their pensions look good in terms of percentages they simply don’t compare with the private sector and remember the lowly Civil Servants don’t get a bonus, unlike the top mandarins. Ā£9,874 a year is not a good pension.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t agree with home working and I think it has a negative impact on productivity. I know many people who work in the private sector who work from home and equally swing the lead. This country has become entitled and lazy but this has been enabled by the stupid legislation our politicians have implemented. What other country has our level of sickness benefits, I expect none.
January 25, 2025
There is nobody in any of the three parties in parliament that have been in government that would ever consider doing what President Trump is doing in the USA, possibly with the sole exception of Suella.
The Donald is demonstrating how things need to be done if you want to make fundamental change in the way a country is governed. That is what we desperately need.
By 2028, we will have real evidence of the progress being made across the Atlantic. I expect it to be very substantial, with a booming economy, while 2TK and Theeves will have made things considerably worse here. The contrast will be something like the difference between our two countries in the early 1950s.
We can only hope that Reform continues to make headway and gets together with the very few real Conservatives left, to produce an inspiring programme here. Nobody else would do anything other than muddle along as we are towards Net Zero and bankrupcy
January 25, 2025
The quickest way to reduce Civil Service numbers is to sack all those who refuse to return to working a 5 day week. If it was possible to sack care workers who refused a jab which did not prevent the spread of Covid then it is possible to sack workers who insist upon āworkingā from home.
January 27, 2025
01/03/2022 āCare workers sacked for refusing to get Covid-19 vaccine can get their job backā. It was a decision of the SoS Sajid Javid.
January 30, 2025
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