My Cap X article
The public sector proceeds by running out of cash and then demanding more
More government spending is not the same as better public services
The UK’s lost public sector productivity could fill the Chancellor’s black hole
Here’s something people of all parties and of none ought to agree about. If we could raise public sector productivity we could have better service for less money. Could we also agree that the failure of the public sector to raise its productivity so far this century is something we should be able to change? The official forecasters pencil in good progress in raising productivity in the private sector, so shouldn’t the public sector be able to help out? As the public sector spends a fortune on bigger and better computers, shouldn’t there be some savings on the wages bill? If the public sector had managed just 1% annual growth in productivity, there would have been no black hole in the Chancellor’s figures. If we could get back up to 2019 levels of public sector productivity, there would have been no need for all those Budget tax rises.
Much of what the state does can be automated – tax collection and benefit payments already largely are. These big clerical factories can plan for fewer, better-paid people to manage the systems, deal with hard cases and talk to the public while much more of the work is done by the digital giants. The NHS is moving over to more being done online and via computer booking. Policing draws more on computers, mobile phone records and camera evidence to trace, track and arrest criminals.
Quality and efficiency are two sides of the same coin. Get things right first time and you can slim down the complaints department. You have more happy service users and less correspondence and fewer calls to handle. Get things right and you waste less of your supplies. Doing things well and providing a quality service is good for staff morale, encourages a can-do attitude and gives people a wish to avoid waste.
In the private sector, when I have been leading companies I have always put customers first. Without them you do not have a business. I have always stressed the importance of managing the cash. A profit is not a proper profit unless it is reflected in a bigger cash balance. The aim is to get enough revenue from satisfied customers to pay decent wages, meet the other costs and have some left over. You need the profit to invest in the future, to replace old plant and reward the shareholders who put the money up in the first place.
Good businesses generate cash, giving them options to renew and improve. If you can get productivity rising, you can reward people better and still have more left over to fund future plans. Failure to manage the cash leads to decline and bankruptcy, which can come swiftly if things have drifted.
In the public sector, I have always found there was plenty of cash if you knew where to look and intended to manage it. Most of the public sector always claims it has insufficient cash and always wants new money for new ideas without looking to see what could be shut down or reduced to pay for them. It is reluctant to go on the journey of continuous improvement. It proceeds by deliberately running out of cash and then demanding more, against threats to close or cut the most important things it does.
The good private sector manager, by contrast, is always on the road to better performance, accepts the need to cut or close marginal or poorly-performing activities and always has money for the core purposes and the key services. Any sign of cutting corners or spending too little on quality flows quickly into fewer sales and a bigger financial black hole.
In my new monograph for the Centre for Policy Studies, I set out some of the basics of how a manager improves productivity and quality. It does not need compulsory redundancies or big new investment programmes.
The first task of a public sector productivity programme today should be to get back up to 2019 levels. The public sector knows it could achieve that. And 2019 was before AI, so you do not need a big investment in new computing to do it.
What it does require is better management of staff. People are moved around too often in the public sector, so you do not get the benefit for long after they have worked out the best way to do a job. Rewards need to be better aligned with performance. Bonuses are paid too readily without requiring good results. How did the CEOs of the Post Office get bonuses for losing the state a fortune and locking up some of their best employees? How did bosses at HS2 get bonuses for massive delays and cost overruns on their railway line?
The public sector is also overstocked, and often writes off stock which goes to waste in some half-remembered warehouse. The property estate is rambling, and has not been modernised and downsized for the era of working from home. Much capital spend is one-off, overspecified and changed too often in the process of designing and building it.
The public sector needs to improve its customer or service-user focus. Public sector managers look upwards, knowing they rely on senior officials in the Treasury and Ministers to underwrite their mistakes and provide them with more money when the cash runs out. The habits of spending badly and in a rush before the year-end, parking money in reserves or unlikely capital spending to vire (i.e. transfer) it out when needed, are bad ideas.
Answering every question about what the government is doing to improve services with statements about increases in spending shows the wrong mindset. If I go into a shop to buy a shirt, I do not care how much it costs the shop to provide me with the service. Nor would I regard it as a good reply to be told that, although they don’t have the item in stock, they plan to spend £1 million in future to fix the problem. I would expect them to tell me how quickly they can get one and how it will be delivered to me. I want them to offer high-quality, low-cost retailing to keep their prices down.
The public sector often blames the user for not conforming to its bad service, whereas successful private sector businesses thrive on meeting customer requirements. The Christmas pudding maker does not tell you he cannot supply for Christmas because that’s when everyone wants one. The public sector rations road space to create traffic jams in an effort to stop people wanting to travel so much or at the times that fit their lives. It does not see high demand for certain routes to be an opportunity to provide more and better service.
Getting productivity back up in the public sector is the nearest to finding a magic money tree in the overrun public sector jungle. The sooner we find it, the sooner we can have tax levels that help growth, and a better balance between the public and private sectors.
February 14, 2026
the NHS spends more on lawyers defending it against legal claims for negligence and poor care in maternity wards than it does on maternity services. the standard of care in maternity wards is sub 3rd world. yet we are supposed to bang our pots and pans for the NHS. nobody is accountable, nobody ever gets sacked. the system just keeps rolling along. its too hard for politicians to take on.
February 14, 2026
Indeed it is appalling
Our dire legal system also spent rather a lot prosecuting and jailing the surely innocent of all 15 offences – or at least totally unsafe convictions of poor Lucy Letby. Plus twice 3 “learned” appeal court judges have refused her even the right to appeal.
February 14, 2026
worse the legal system has let off people for cracking a police officers spine, for trying to knife somebody trying to burn a book, and so on, it is completely not fit for purpose
February 14, 2026
I agree to a degree for sure. But after visiting a hospital a lot with my sick mum and more I was shocked how rude / bad mannered / aggrssive / ungrateful patients sometimes / often were. As well as family not visiting relatives. And people dying alone in hospital. The dysfunction is prevalent throughout our society (me too) – and the entire Western world. Not just the NHS.
And of those who are in private care, how many of them receive genuine warmth and care instead of, to a degree, people waiting to profit in some way from them (and look at health care in the USA were middle class people with lots of savings can be financially finished if hit by a serious illness that private healthcare finds a way of not paying for). But certainly, socialism does not help either and is toxic.
February 14, 2026
One thing i don’t understand is why highly paid Mandarins are left in limbo at the end of a project. They are then appointed to manage another project with no experience then employing consultants to do the actual work.
Productivity is not a word in the public sector, everything is based on the size of the budget and the number employed.
The sooner bonuses are only paid for on or below budget and on or before time, then.o.ly will we see improvement
February 14, 2026
I can only agree.
I have seem senior MOD PM’s who have spent decades managing building projects suddenly given software projects to manage, and it is the inevitable dogs breakfast (although the status reports look great, and there is always a great excuse for the screw ups). In a similar way I have seen Royal Artillery colonels who have spent their life leading artillery troops suddenly given software projects to manage, and while their self perception and confidence is extremely high the results are another dogs breakfast. Staggers me that it happens so much.
It was worse during Covid with laughable staff assignments, and subcontracting, or people who were clearly pulling a lot of wool over a lot of eyes.
February 14, 2026
@iain gill – Parliament has Wes Streeting in charge, managing, doing the hiring and firing and the a clearly happy with the way he is doing the job of taking charge – go figure
February 14, 2026
the reality of the PPE incompetence and waste during covid has avoided proper scrutiny, the public sector workers who destroyed the evidence are still in the public sector doing rather well. billions wasted, none of the self reflection and ideas on how to do better the next time. vast sums spent in china for little to show for it. yet another critical national infrastructure we are incapable of supplying ourselves.
February 14, 2026
The really expensive incompetence was the net harm unsafe and ineffective Covid “vaccines” and the net harm lockdowns costing circa £600bn while doing vast net harm.
February 14, 2026
far more people were put on ventilation than should have been during covid, and far more people died from the problems caused by being put on ventilators than covid itself. this is all demonstrated by the current protocols for people with covid which demand ventilation in far lower percentages of patients.
February 14, 2026
See the excellent Dr. Clare Craig’s Spiked: A shot in the dark kindle book.
And the appalling post Covid “Vaccine” mortality and injury figures the government are trying and failing to hide!
February 14, 2026
a classic example of crap public sector service is the failure to roll out proton beam therapy widely in the NHS. it is basically only offered to small numbers of children with head cancers. mainly due to a father the British state chased around the world and had arrested, for nothing more than taking his child for better care abroad. the public sector officials who did that were never sanctioned. other countries get far better results than we do for adult head cancers, prostate cancer, and so much more, because they use proton beam while we continue to use xray radiotherapy. the NHS simply cannot get its corporate brain around a proper cost benefits analysis, it is stuck in the rationing and allocation communist mindset. if the NHS was in charge of cars we would all be driving trabants.
February 14, 2026
I am in absolute agreement with all 3 of your comments (eerily it’s as if you are writing word for word what’s in my head)
I think when it comes to public services we have a huge problem with politicised unions, and we know certain parties will never tackle that because they are their money lenders.
The public also are easily persuaded by campaigns to show our poor nurses have to visit food banks, junior doctors are tied to their posts with bread and water, etc. The NHS is used as a political tool to bring the public into line, both Cons. and Labour have used it as such, particularly during the covid era.
So anyone wanting to tackle that particular area of one of our many problems must first of all ensure the left wing media are not allowed to produce bias reporting. A big Conservative failure, in my opinion was always the timidity to fight back against blatant media preference rather than even handed reporting.
February 14, 2026
thanks, lets do coffee sometime…
February 14, 2026
Starting with the Civil Service, why are they permitted to recruit thousands more Staff at the drop of a hat? Why, when the country is in dire straights does the Head of that poor service receive £250k pay off when he ‘retires’? Why are Hospitals being paid to cancel appointments or GP’s getting extra cash for prescribing Statins. The Banking system can transfer money from one account to another in a different bank immediately. So why aren’t deaths recorded immediately and patients names removed from GP lists, stopping Surgeries getting paid for patients they don’t have?
The NHS and Civil Service waste so much money through mismanagement, if managers thought it was their money they were squandering rather than Taxpayers, that practice would soon cease. Total overhaul of the Public Sector by a Private Sector Enterprise required immediately.
February 14, 2026
Indeed the other many magic money trees would be 1. the ditching of the May/Miliband/Tory/Labour/Libdim anti-scientific net zero lunacy. Even the dire Tony Blair seems to have finally realised this and as Starkey rightly says in his videos Blair did more harm than two World Wars.
2. “Much of what the state does can be automated” indeed but much of what the state does is entirely negative so we do not want it doing more efficiently we want it stopped.
Much of what it does is blatant Anarcho-tyranny a system where the state fails to enforce fundamental laws (anarchy) while simultaneously over-regulating, taxing, fining and oppressing essentially law-abiding citizens (tyranny). People who perhaps acidentally put a tyre in an empty bus lane, or for a seconds or two or do 23 mph in a new 20 mph zone, or pour a drop of coffee down a street drain, or spit out a fly that went into their mouths, or are late with the tax return perhaps due to illness or absurd complexity…
and 3. Deregulation (a huge benefit for both the private sector and the state sector).
and 4 Easy hire and fire also a huge benefit for both the private sector and the state sector.
and 5 Stop aumenting the healthy but feckless with over generous benefits to live off the back of others.
and 6. A vast bonfire of red tap policies and tax simplification policies that release essentially parasitic and unproductive workers in law, tax consultancy, HR, DEI, OTT health and safely both in private sector compliance and in the state sector to get productive jobs instead.
7. Get free and fair unrigged competition between state and the private sector often the more efficient private sector is being pushed out of business by unfair competition in schools, universities, transport, healthcare, BBC broadcasting, banking…
8. Stop pushing the wealthly, high tax paying and hard working people overseas, People like Sir Jim Radcliffe, and stop importing low skilled, low or not tax paying and benefit claiming people to replace them. Stop Reeve’s doom loop suicidal lunacy.
February 14, 2026
A blueprint for our new political clans which will emerge now that there is a proper job to do, thanks to Brexit, and a proper party to serve, Restore Britain.
Let’s win more than the arguments.
We owe it to our fathers and our children.
February 14, 2026
Well yet but we have first past the post voting so Restore Britain and Mr Lowe say the right things but are likely to be fairly irrelevant,
February 14, 2026
My son was off from London to Bath this weekend with his Girlfriend. The train cost was £250 each (return) for the flexible 230 mile return journey at the times they needed (plus the end connection taxis) and about another £250 each in taxpayer subsidies to the rail companies too. So they got a coach for about £35 each. Please kill off these moronic and rigged markets. If trains are so energy efficient (as is endlessly claimed) why do they cost such a fortune and yet are not even reliable or clean or have working loos?
They could probably have had a weekend in the Canaries for less than just this train fare to Bath. An average wage worker might have to work an extra 60 hours and after tax and NI he can just buy two return train tickets London-Bath and still has the hotel and meals to fund!
February 14, 2026
You could sack everyone in Network Rail head offices for little impact on the railway.
Making the failed Network Rail people the core of the new nationalised mega train operating company is a massive mistake.
Great British Railway is nothing more than the very worst railway managers in Network Rail being given control over all the trains as well as the tracks they were already managing badly.
Claiming West Mids trains is being nationalised when in fact it was already being run by the West Mids mayor is a joke, it is not being nationalised, it is being moved from one public sector owner to another public sector owners, one that is more removed from the people of the West Mids.
So many layers of crap management, political interference, and dogmatic communist claptrap from the current government.
February 14, 2026
Cost of HS2 2025 – goggle
‘As of mid-2025, the total expenditure on the HS2 project reached £40.5 billion, with the 2025-2026 budget allocated at £7.2 billion’
February 14, 2026
You got a point!
I was researching a visit to Switzerland for the Alps but cheaper and a lot more fun just to fly to Nepal and hike around in the fab Himalayas. But at least the trains in Switzerland are much better, reliable and aesthetically-pleasing to one’s here (although in fairness, accomodation in UK much better value than Switzerland (rip off). I could write a small book about probs with our trains.
Lastly, I paid a pound or something ridiculous for a train filled with wonderfully adorned and fascinating-looking tribal people across the desert in Rajhasthan. And then food and accommodation for nothing. I’ll only ever travel anywhere in Europe now for a football game or something.
February 14, 2026
And you could have an adventure on the trains in the UK in the old days. Like in the Railway Children. Fab book (thought it was going to be boring). Our country is that much POORER in terms of relative loss of charm and loss of innocence. You cannot put a price on that.
Which is one of many reasons why over-focusing on GDP to judge how successfully a nation doing is nonsense (a strong economy is essential but so is an environment where our children (and grown-ups!) can run around and have adventures and experience real charm in their environment.
February 14, 2026
as an 11 year old I would regularly go on 10 mile walks on my own in the holidays.
there is no way an 11 year old now would be allowed to do that, the streets are simply not safe.
February 14, 2026
Hi. I remember spending a week with five friends the same age on bikes by the coast. It was like Famous Five but even better (no detective stories to solve – but more fun!). You can’t put a price on that. £10K? £50K? £100K Money can’t buy such precious moments where you feel really alive like in an exciting story (even more alive – I think real life is more exciting and enjoyable than fiction – or can be!).
February 14, 2026
https://dailysceptic.org/2026/02/12/excess-deaths-continue-to-climb-with-no-sign-of-slowing-down/
The government is still hiding the statistice properly broken down by Covid Vaccine status of the victims which would reveal the truth in no time at all. I assume this is because they know the truth.
The article concludes:-
As Covid is a negligible factor in overall mortality statistics now, something else has caused these excess deaths. Furthermore, whatever it is, it appears to still be working its insidious effects as we begin 2026. The only way to describe such a situation is carnage on a scale that would be considered unacceptable even in a war situation. It is quite extraordinary that this matter has not been properly investigated by the UK authorities, who seem neither to notice nor to care.
February 14, 2026
This is a crime against humanity.
February 14, 2026
I agree and even had the vaccines been “safe and effective” there was never any sense in giving or coercing them to the healthy younger people, children or people who had already had Covid who had virtually zero risk -so why did they? Even the trial figure indicated the large dangers!
Follow the money with even the vaccine regulators directly funded by big Pharma and with vested interests.
February 14, 2026
I wouldn’t trust the Daily Sceptic as far as i could throw it. You might find the ONS weekly series more useful.
The main messages of this report are:
“in week 3 (week ending 18 January) of 2026, no signal of high mortality above the baseline was seen in England using all ages combined
no signal of high mortality above the baseline was seen in England in those aged under 5 years, aged 5 to 14 years, aged 15 to 64 years and aged 65 years and over, or in any region
a signal of high all-cause mortality above the baseline for all ages combined was seen in Northern Ireland but was not seen in Wales, or Scotland in the week ending 18 January 2026 (week 3) applied by week of death occurrence (Table 3)
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/weekly-all-cause-mortality-surveillance-2025-to-2026/weekly-all-cause-mortality-surveillance-week-7-2026-report-up-to-week-3-2026-data
February 14, 2026
So why do they hide the illness and mortality figures broken down by vaccines status. Why would they do this if the vaccines had not done vast net harms? See the figure from Japan and other places that do not censor these.
The NHS, ONS could easily clear the matter up just release honest raw figures broken down by vaccine status, age, conditions, dates of injury and death suitably anonymised. But they choose and indeed fight FOI requests so as to hide these! Why?
February 14, 2026
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/articles/estimatingexcessdeathsintheukmethodologychanges/february2024
Methodology changes 2024 – Clare Craig HART group is perhaps best on this issue and in her recent book and the inexplicable (unless of course the figures are very damning as it seems they are) resistance to FOI requests.
February 14, 2026
it is not better management that makes the private sector more efficient than the public sector, its buying power in the individual citizens hands, which forces providers to continually innovate, optimise, and keep customers happy. inefficient business units shut and new better ones replace them. there are virtuous feedback loops from individual consumers to top management. to improve public sector services we need to hand real, continual, effective buying power over to individual citizens wherever possible. in everything schools, health care, housing, advice services, etc.
February 14, 2026
Indeed every time you spend money you vote in the private sector. With government you get a largely worthless vote every five years for someone who will rarely even try to deliver what was promised.
February 14, 2026
Exactly! The Market is subject to a vote every day and if they lose then the consequences are wipeout – not recycle to a cushy number.
Concentrates the mind wonderfully.
Now we at last have a Market in politics because Lowe is a substantial man. He is attracting substantial people. Maybe the British will save themselves last minute …. again! 🙏🏻
February 14, 2026
Can’t resist pointing out that the whole point of socialist bureacracies and regulation is get the user to conform to its processes of bad service. Customer is a novel concept. Users are things on a process or use case diagram, if they feature at all. The most egregious example is the NHS. Patient choice is an utterly foreign concept. The emphasis is on socialist equality, nobody is allowed to have better service than anyone else. Quality of output is pushed down to the lowest common denominator.
Since Sir John has not quoted any figures it might be worth looking at recent ONS data:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity/publicservicesproductivity/bulletins/publicserviceproductivityquarterlyuk/januarytomarch2025
Highlights include:
a) Healthcare productivity grew 2.7% in Quarter 1 2025 compared with Quarter 1 2024. Could be true my experience of the NHS is out of date and I would say if productuvity had not improved the death rate in Uk would have gone up in UK since Covid. NHS waiting lists in England peaked at 7.7 million in September 2023 but have slightly reduced to around 7.29–7.3 million by late 2025/early 2026, marking a three-year low. Ergo productivity improved but is still terrible. Long waits for elective treatment remain well above pre-pandemic levels, with significant pressures in A&E, where 12-hour trolley waits hit a new record in January 2026. I suspect the methodology applied to the NHS contains many fudges.
b) Annualised public sector productivity growth in 2024 has been revised up to 0.1% from negative 0.3%. Well, ain’t that great news?
c) Annualised quarterly estimates imply total public service productivity has yet to return to its pre-pandemic peak. In 2024, total public service productivity was 4.2% lower than the 2019 level. Why aren’t we surprised?
Reply The NHS waiting lists fell because people were removed who do not want or need treatment so it does not mean productivity went up. I set out numbers in my research
February 14, 2026
Reply to Reply, in my first hand knowledge people were also removed from waiting lists who still wanted and needed treatment, including children.
February 14, 2026
Indeed moved to the waiting list for the real waiting list! They also say things like “it is a bit early to do you knee replacement now not quite bad enough and we want it to last you out”. Then five years later they told the chap it is hard to do this now as due to your other health conditions and hight weight (due to immobility) it might now be too dangerous… any excuse to do as little as possible – rather like the police, noise abatement and social services in my experience.
February 14, 2026
NHS waiting lists are a complete farce, rather then recording when first seen, they should only record final treatment and upon release from hospital/GP …..everything else can and will be a manipulation of figures to satisfy government
February 14, 2026
In short the government cares not what they spend not what (if any) poitive value they actually deliver to the public. It is not their money nor they who get the value. They far would prefer just to use the money for higher civil service wages, better pensions, more “working” from home and/or nicer offices.
February 14, 2026
the tax and benefits system could be administered far more cheaply if we had a radical simplification of the rules, and politicians stopped meddling.
I could sketch out a new system in half a day. tax and benefits offices could be privatised. pay benefits by manipulating the tax allowance, put everyone not already on a paye system on one which pays a nominal one pound per month, but which triggers tax refunds from allowance. scrap all the benefits systems. scrap NI and roll it into tax. so easy to do. so much admin saving we could do without a lots of barriers to payouts and still be cash positive.
February 14, 2026
My Lord, we all know what is happening in the Public Sector. The focus of activities has been switched from service provision to virtue signal point scoring and tick box trining to meet the latest DEI ESG or other dreamed up essential distraction.
We now have councils up and down the country actually bankrupt despite above inflation increases in charges for council tax etc. The money they should be devoting to services is being squandered on Net Zero alignment. Council houses must be retrofitted with solar panels and insulation plus heat pumps yet they have no money to fund these programs. The result is a very few individuals have warmer homes while the majority of rate payers have a degraded council service to help cover the costs.
Town centres that were the economic drivers locally are being shut down by excessive controls imposed by councils, no parking allowed, road closures to avoid short cut journeys that locals had the privilege of knowing are gone, fines for simply being stranded in a box junction due to traffic light controls stopping traffic flow.
In my own small town we now have pedestrian crossings sequencing to red to stop traffic without anyone pressing a button to cross. The effect is simply to stop traffic flow which it does. There is zero benefit to anybody, just more frustration.
The whole mindset of public service has to change and return to the days when those paid from the tax payers purse were true civil servants. Back to the days when value for money was a focal point of service.
We can but hope.
February 14, 2026
Councils bankrupt because poor equality legislation and mad judges have forced them to pay retrospectively one group of workers what an entirely different set of workers was being paid for completely different jobs. Instead of letting the market set the pay for one skill and role we have judges setting pay levels retrospectively.
The same reason the bin men are still not working in Birmingham, and the streets are worse than Islamabad for dirt and rubbish everywhere.
February 14, 2026
Rid
“In my own small town we now have pedestrian crossings sequencing to red to stop traffic without anyone pressing a button to cross. The effect is simply to stop traffic flow which it does. There is zero benefit to anybody, just more frustration.”
I’ve noticed this where I live in Greater London!
February 14, 2026
the silliest thing is red lights set to allow buses in the bus lane through, which do that even on a Sunday when the relevant buses don’t even run. I have been pointing this out for decades now, the lights still hold up hundreds of cars up on a Sunday to let phantom buses through. it is just another anti car measure from the public sector.
February 14, 2026
Indeed bus lanes often give only half the road space to circa 90% of the traffic. Reducing the road capacity to nearly half and that is before the anti-car traffic lights.
February 14, 2026
YES, and much of what the state does could be vastly simplified.
We’ve been promised a new dire way of reporting our tax affairs, whereby we have to regularly supply data that HMRC already has. That alone is destined to make our lives far too complicated for no gain.
The tax system needs a vast overhaul – we all know that, but while people are being penalised for earning a living the State will continue to weigh heavily on our lives.
There are things that could be done to make income tax less taxing by removing the ‘persona’ and move it to a company tax. Companies would simply pay the tax for the individual which would be one step in getting rid of an abhorrent tax.
Also, by switching more taxation to VAT we wouldn’t need oppressive rules from HMRC – these would really help to get the state off our backs but nobody is interested in such ideas, probably because governments like to be on our backs and in control.
February 14, 2026
This article made me chuckle…it just shows that public sector workers and bosses just don’t think the same way as everyone else do they?
How did we end up with so many narrow minded, unimaginative and rather naive people running the country?
February 14, 2026
By rewarding them for failure.
February 14, 2026
“Good businesses generate cash” but how? Good businesses supply what the consumer wants, needs, in a competitive World, that in return produces cash!
February 14, 2026
Never mind drops in public sector efficiency since Covid, the public sector has always been inefficient.
The best way to deal with it is to reduce what the public sector does.
Take healthcare for example, allow people to opt out of the NHS with private healthcare and credit them with a tax rebate for doing so. Great for employer schemes. Remove the obligation of the NHS to treat lifestyle diseases – insurance, charity or crowd-funding instead for private care.
Rather than impose VAT on school fees, give people a tax rebate if they go private comparable to how much the state saves.
Remove the obligation on local councils to provide care homes for the elderly – those who spent all the money they ever had and didn’t put by for their old age. Again, insurance, charity or crowd-funding. Today’s workers have to pay tax that goes on national debt interest previous governments their parents voted for racked up. Haven’t they been stitched up enough?
February 14, 2026
You refer to bonuses in the Public sector. It would be very interesting to know what are the KPIs to be achieved to qualify for payment, if indeed there are any. I very much doubt that improving productivity is one of them, which it certainly should be, and no bonuses at all should be paid to |Treasury officials without a commensurate reduction in the number of pages in Tolley’s Tax Manual.
February 14, 2026
It all comes back to the simple elements of responsibility and accountability. The only people managing the State is those elected to sit on the Board of UK.plc those empowered and paid to be MPs. They alone own the output of the State, control its costs, manage and are held responsible for its management. They take money from the Taxpayer by their Laws as the UK’s Legislators, they are then responsible for every penny they spend, no one else.
Logic then the Managers of the State, our MPs in our Parliament are the ones in neglect. Its not those they employ in the State that WFH, those that employ DEI staff that waste taxpayers’ money it is their managers, the UK Parliament, its MPs that are the lazy in seemingly the incompetent ones. They are by default ordering up waste, neglect and a refusal to deliver. They are at the top of the hire and fire chain; they can change things overnight.
So maybe when better management is talked about, we should start at the top. The impediment there is they fear the People, fighting the People and refuse the People and the Nation a voice – they cancel and impede what should be the referenda on their performance. They fight Democracy
February 14, 2026
In order to have “better management to cut the deficit” isn’t the first question which needs to be answered is why did this happen?
February 14, 2026
Sorry to keep repeating this, but until you ruthlessly reduce the number of public-sector workers, you will see no increase in productivity. I have bought my Road Fund Licence for my car online for years. So, how many people have gone from the DVLC as a result?
What do 53,000 Civil Servants in the Home Office do all day? How many Civil Servants have been sacked for poor performance over the last five years? Can you name any MP who has consistently called for proper government spending cuts over the last five years, except our host? Since WW2, we have had 80 years of peace in the UK, and 80 years of more regulation, more tax, more laws, more complications. Today, our Government and Public Sector are a shambles. Where is the man or woman to really get a grip and sort it out?
February 14, 2026
I notice that whether it’s the Civil Service or government the study of classics or politics or PPE or law or even biology means that the hard work of understanding any physics can be avoided in order to be in a top position deciding our country’s energy policy or approach to climate change.
February 14, 2026
Labour want to cancel Brexit they will then be able to blame the EU for all their mistakes
Instead of taking the benefits of Brexit
Thank you
February 14, 2026
1. Government departments should have a 10% reduction in annual budget until deficit balance
2. Government should stop all payments to the EU, UN, Horizon, Foreign Aid
3. Government should stop all nuclear weapons and use 50% of budget for conventional and drone arms
4. Government should place all illegal immigrants in secure camps, bed & meal only
5. No one in public service should get paid more than the PM, regulate all government funded salaries under a single spine
6. No to chagoes island deal saving £35bn
This is what a private business would do if the receivers where knocking at the door, threatening liquidation
February 14, 2026
How did I forget …..cancel ‘Net-Zero’, saving £trillions
February 14, 2026
@glen cullen – NetZero should never been entertained by Parliament its MPs, with out reviewing costs, how the money to pay for it was to be generated. Punishing consumers with punitive malicious cost with no end, is not a Parliament working for the country and the people.
So far all we have seen is the cost of energy to business and the consumer in the UK, being double if not four times the price of that those nations we compete with are paying. That is a GDP hit.
February 14, 2026
The purpose of the CAGW hoax, manipulating science in a way that puts climate over people, and its net zero “solution” is to keep the populace in poverty, frightened and controlled so that only a privileged few will benefit. Note that the renewables “solution” has quickly gone from providing cheap energy in abundance (we were to be the Saudi Arabia of wind) to expensive, intermittent energy where the only way to cut our bills is to use less with the implementation of rolling black-outs. The next step will be a carbon credit system where our elites will be buying CO2 credits from the poor to keep their lifestyle unchanged.
February 14, 2026
Our government had a clever plan to put the cost of net-zero on domestic energy bills, so they could blame the energy providers rather than govt policy
February 14, 2026
Sad to say but caliber of management is very poor in both the public and private sector. Management tends to be better in mid sized businesses that are family owned where results really count rather than ticking boxes. So many businesses and corporates have outsourced core functions and spend most of their time dealing with measuring performance of the outsource rather than focusing on value. Staff that question strategies are ignored or sidelined. To top it all experience is no longer valued, many businesses get rid of older expert staff to cut costs and outsource without understanding where true value and where opportunities lie. How to fix this? Probably encourage mid to small business and family businesses where value is generated and provide an environment that allows them to compete with corporates and public monoliths rather than allowing corporates and public monoliths to always have the advantage of lobbies and government favour.
February 14, 2026
The public sector remains unproductive because both the managers and the managed are quietly determined to protect themselves against redundancy while doing as little as possible. Luddite methods include resisting automation, avoiding efficient working and refusing to cooperate with the digitizing of information.
This active resistance is most visible in organizations such as the NHS, BBC, civil service and local government.
‘Quiet quitting’ we have all heard of. ‘Quiet remaining’ – holding out until pensionable age while refusing to change a thing – is less well reported. Because it is silent, this attitude cannot usually be identified by the public – when encountered it can just look like stupidity, or poor judgement. But it is actually an unspoken but stubborn cadre conspiracy of self-preservation, in which goals are fictional, and tasks are extended and put off as far as possible.
Those who go in for public sector jobs (like those who seek out submissive low-grade jobs in private industry) tend to have a paranoid need for an illusory ‘security’ based on the sense that they have little positive to give to the world.
The Office of Circumlocution existed long before Dickens immortalized it, and its post-Dickensian reform was a fig-leaf. It is still with us, and now ubiquitous.
February 14, 2026
rather repeatedly you are trying to hold back the tide.Alternate days of essays on matters economic
no longer cut the mustard.No question my country is going down the pan.Financially,Industrially
and socially.We are ruled by backroom bureaucrats wearing the “I’m in Charge” cap.Not one
with a background of working class/military enlistment and service.Ask the question”why was
Bradford awarded the “City of Culture”?I remember being taken there to visit my great grandad
1952 and saw strange people.Not Leeds folk.Much later who they were is now in the majority.
I am not a racist.In fact I despair of today’s white young’uns that proliferate in my quiet
seaside town.No wonder their teachers have given up
February 15, 2026
The civil service management better start preparing for the impact of AI on jobs. Moving and assessing data …. AI, Calculating tax returns, responding to car registration and tax issues, preparing legislation, reporting on NHS “productivity” …. you name it, AI can do it faster and better NOW. In as short a time as this year end it will be unbelievably better .. it’s progressing that rapidly. Civil Service jobs of all types can go .. staff reductions could be MASSIVE AND NEED TO BE.
AND who really needs train drivers.