I launched a piece of research into public sector productivity and service quality at the Centre for Policy Studies on Wednesday evening. I am grateful to them for publishing the work which is available through their website.
I set out the official figures showing there has been no overall productivity growth in the public sector since 1997. We have missed out on more than a quarter century of improvement despite large sums spent on computerisation and labour saving automation. If we had achieved just 1% a year growth in productivity our public services would be saving us around £280 bn a year, or would be 30% better.
I drew on my experiences running parts of the public sector as an Executive Councillor and as a Minister, where it was sometimes possible to save money, reduce stocks, cut back on excess property, use natural wastage to slim workforces. I also learned from leading two international industrial businesses from their English head offices how to bring the aspirations of staff into line with the needs of customers. I always focused the businesses on customers and service, linking salaries and bonuses to providing excellence for customers.
I developed or introduced Quality systems. I regarded a customer complaint as a stimulus to improvement. First remedy the issue for the customer. If they have lost provide compensation. Next try to design out the fault to prevent it happening again. Continuous improvement and learning from mistakes are critical.
The public sector in places has much to learn from well run customer friendly businesses. Billions of our taxes and borrowings every year go on paying for inefficiencies and mistakes that create low productivity. We cannot afford more HS 2 s and Post Office computer investments that backfire so badly.
February 13, 2026
Excellent CV! If only the same could be said for Labour.
February 13, 2026
Well if the government just stopped doing all the things they do that do net harm then, that alone, would make a huge different. The state sector debt has risen by about 60% of GDP over the past 16 years this largely spent on things that did no good or often did vast net harm. Things like the net harm lockdowns, net harm Covid “vaccines”, the Net Zero rip off energy, subsidies for EV, renewables, heat pumps, public transport… soft loans for duff worthless degrees, over the top red tape, payments that encourage the healthy fecklesss not to work, blocking planning, killing fracking, drilling, mining… HS2, the PPE corruption…
When they measure state sector “productivity” they need to also decide what things the state sector produce that are of
A: negative value, B no value or C rather occasionally positive value. They also need to consider even when they are of positive value was this value more than the negative value produce by taking the tax of businesses and individuals allowing also for the large collection and distribution costs.
Also what private sector businesses they push out of business in for example education and healthcare.
February 13, 2026
@Lifelogic – who is managing the State sector? who is responsible for the State sector? more narrow who is managing the NHS? Or looked at another way who is responsible for stealing from the taxpayer and spending the money. Who is responsible for managing the returns achieved from the spending of taxpayer money.
Who is responsible for ensuring that the country and its people are able to earn to replenish the spending being splashed about?
Parliament, its MPs ‘own’ the productivity achieved and the service delivered, it is their government they put in charge no one else’s. All failures are theirs collectively and as individuals.
All the time there are no elections, these failures can’t and shouldn’t be dumped on the people and the nation
February 13, 2026
Point well made. Somebody somewhere, it must be hoped, records how many patients are seen, treated discharged etc. But I doubt it ever goes up to the minister; their position simply appears to be ‘how much money can I get from Treasury to spend on my department this year’ — Job done! I don’t think ‘value for money’ or ‘treating more for less from better management’ ever troubles them. Perhaps having some ministers with prior real experience of the activities of their departments might help…
February 13, 2026
Your approach led me to only buying japanese cars from 1992 to the present day. I do my best to avoid companies that send out NO REPLY missives. Additionally beware dealing with companies that have no email contact, they only wish to sell but avoid serving.
You could apply much the same criterior to politicians and especially the current government whose product is not of merchantable quality.
February 13, 2026
Yes, DESNZ refuse to allow any contact by email. A member of the public may only send a letter (printed paper+ envelope + stamp) which means that data cannot be included and, worse still, ministers never see these letters as they are all dealt with by Civil Servants. I also believe that public comments on Select Committee reports should be published together with the reports. So when a Select Committee consists of activists, and invites only activists to give evidence and then produces a report purely in support of the cause they wish to promote it becomes clear why government departments can end up digging themselves into deeper and deeper holes.
February 13, 2026
PS : It is disgraceful that the dreadful Ed Miliband refuses to publish the “deal” he has made with China in March last year. In fact I cannot believe that a minister can sign us up to secret treaties, but then anything is now possible since the judiciary are now happy to collude with the government to hide what they are doing using super injunctions.
February 13, 2026
Original Richard
And the minute you see the word ‘secret’, alarm bells ring and raises suspicion, what has he got to hide?
February 13, 2026
He’s even refusing to disclose the ‘deal’ with the select committee and the house ?
February 13, 2026
So Keir Starmer heavily criticized comments made by Manchester United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe regarding immigration, labeling them “offensive and wrong”.
What is wrong with the word “Colonise” Kier? :- “Colonise” (or -ize) derives from the Latin colonus (“farmer, settler”) and colere (“to cultivate, till, inhabit”). Alas it is often worse than this as many are not farming or working but often living off the backs of other tax payers in a doom loop agenda.
I see that he (perhaps foolishly) sort of apologised. Something like “sorry if any (simple or over sensitive souls) were offended”. But with the bit in brackets not actually said.
He should have said sorry for A. supporting Labour at the last election and B claiming that Starmer was a nice, decent and intelligent man as this is clearly damaging & false
Much criticism of the Radcliffe for not paying his fair share of tax and now living in Monaco. Well he has surely paid far, far more than his fair share and the circa £3 billion he saved will surely be used far more wisely than it would be by this government.
February 13, 2026
There are several meanings of a colony or to colonise.
A group of people who leave their native country to form a new settlement in a foreign land.
A group of people with shared interests, such as an artists’ colony or a specialized, distinct community.
A territory, region, or settlement under the partial or full political control of a distant “mother country” or foreign power, often involving the displacement or oppression of indigenous populations.
.
February 13, 2026
…and each one is a fare decription of what’s happening in the UK
February 13, 2026
@Lifelogic – fair share of tax? paying £110m to the exchequer in 2017-18. While consuming much less of the countries resources than the average taxpayer and certainly less than the criminals that invade our shores. At the very least he was paying proportionally(% wise) more than twice what other residence of the country contribute from their earnings. ‘Fair’ in a sane World means an equal proportion of contribution. I haven’t looked at the figures recently but last time 1 looked more than 51% of the country received more from the taxpayer than they contributed. You would have to have a warped vindictive mind to suggest that ‘fair’ meant punitive malicious punishment.
February 13, 2026
@Lifelogic – according to media reports in the last couple of days Jim Radcliffe by the government’s own statements project he is responsible for providing – directly and downstream – in the region of 30,000 jobs. The Government through their actions was able to shed from the economy 198,000 payrolled employees i December alone
February 13, 2026
Starmer and Sir Ed Dopey both saying the usual things.
Their criticisms no longer hold much weight with Middle England.
Ratcliffe probably looking to avoid getting in the bad books of the football authorities rather than politicians. The football authorities are still politically correct though.
February 13, 2026
Tell it to the red squirrels
February 13, 2026
Natural wastage is every inefficient indeed. You lose the wrong people and are stuck with the dross that others have to carry – making things inefficient for very many years. What is needed is easy hire and fire with a standard no fault pay off of circa £5K after say six months – this could make both the state sector and the private sector hugely more efficient. Anyone decent can easily find another job.
February 13, 2026
Public sector is a magnet for skivers and dossers. Keep your record clean during probation period and you are set up. You can then seek out like-minded colleagues.
Having said that, the old public sector enterprises had some fine employees who knew the job inside out and were there doing good work for life. You will no longer find them in modern railways or public utilities.
There is also the problem of overpaid wasters inflicted upon the public sector through political patronage – heads of NHS trusts and councils etc. If they have to be sacked from one job they just go to a similar one in the same sector.
February 13, 2026
suggest you tell people what CPS is, if I dont know its likely others wont.
it is also services subcontracted by the public sector like pharmacies and dentists, the quality is massively variable, some very bad, and access does not move to reflect population changes like lots of new houses being built. the public sector subcontracts a lot of defence work and its almost an accident if good quality gets delivered. its staggering how bad the public sector is at running subcontracted work.
February 13, 2026
We’ve all experienced this decline in efficiency. This week I needed a “proof of life” form stamped and witnessed at a municipal office. My town (pop 10,900, rural backwater) Council used to have one Clerk, who you found working from a modest back office. You could roll up and he would help you.
Now they have a Clerk and 3 “assistants”, working in a well appointed front office with a big counter and security screen separating them from the public. I was told only the Clerk could do the job I needed, and I’d have to make an appointment to see her.
The Town Council element of the rates was £59 ten years ago, it’s £152 now. That’s a 190% increase in cost, compared to a 1.6% increase in the populaton over the same period. And 10 years ago I could have got my form stamped without any fuss.
February 13, 2026
Same problem with myself and my wife for our pensions from Europe. Until last year we went to the council offices and someone would sign and stamp two forms which we had filled in. This was proof we are still alive. Last year told we don’t do that anymore you have to go to the Registrar and there’s a fee, twenty-five pounds each. What are we paying our councils for?
February 13, 2026
O think you’re wrong
The Civil service has been very productive in increasing headcount, after all they measure efficiency by how many hey employ and the size of their budget.
Productivity in the public sector is measured entirely on how much money they can waste.
Now we have the push for 4 day weeks which will of course improve Productivity as they will have to expand the headcount to fulfill their obligations.
We need to sack the lot and start again.
February 13, 2026
My friends are still working 3-4 days at home ….its in their contract and nobody in the civil service is in any rush to change it
February 13, 2026
“I launched a piece of research into public sector productivity and service quality at the CPS”
The Crown Prosecution Service ? I think it’s pretty clear that service quality there has been poor for a long time, particularly when Starmer ran it and nothing crossed his desk.
Reply No, Centre for Policy Studies
February 13, 2026
The public sector needs a massive shake up. Firstly I’d send in some private companies to do a time and motion study on critical areas, while cutting down the hours that workers could disappear on union business to two hours per month.
Private company teams would take the reports and make recommendations for improvements, including staff reductions. After the dust settles it is very likely most governments would create a lot of fanfare but simply ignore the recommendations and carry on in the same old way. That would be a mistake, a grave one.
In areas where low productivity is endemic I’d outsource that function.
Accountability in the state sector seems to be a failure all of it’s own, in future, every individual should be assessed annually on their goal completions, work volume and quality. National bargaining along with working from abroad would be a thing of the past for civil servants and all state workers. Four day working weeks would be banned.
February 13, 2026
You missed off the most important aspect of private business vs public sector outputs – consequences of poor delivery or performance.
In the private sector competition ensures that business will be lost by poor performance and employees face sanction (limited these days but still operable). In the public sector (including those private companies fulfilling public sector contracts – see Capita’s administration of public sector pensions, bailed out by the government) there is only continuation and possibly a side ways move.
If there are no consequences and the money keeps rolling in, there will be no improvement.
February 13, 2026
Yes, this is the most important aspect. No personal skin in the game.
February 13, 2026
I would love to know when the public sector last had a course titled reducing cost and improving efficiency.
At the time of the stalled efficiency mentioned by Jhn 1997 a strange thing happened in this country.
A character called Tony Blair became PM and introduced courses into the public sector such as Common Purpose. He also introduced mass migration and expansion of the tertiary education system, with a target of 50% of all school leavers going to university. For those of us remembering the days before Blair when we had self sufficiency in energy, when we had a functioning civil service focused on serving the needs of the nation rather than focused on serving the EU. When we had a police force that tackled crime wherever they found it without concern about hurty words or ethnic sensitivities, or whether the character in front of the charging sergeant was a he, she, it or other.
Does anyone else here remember those days before Blair? The days before turbo charged PFI gave us a bankrupt NHS and councils rushing to spend without concerns about legacy financing costs.
If only we could identify who it was that destroyed the functioning parts of the public sector back in 1997….?.
February 13, 2026
Is there no way we can stop the PM continually throwing our money at the Ukraine war, just to keep it running for no good purpose.
We have wasted £billions already, and the latest amount provided by the EU/UK is not small change.
Starmer has his own reasons for carrying on with funding the war, but it really is time he stopped. The death toll is too high. I don’t know what the ratio is but for every £100,000 we use in supporting this lost cause far too many people are being killed.
There is little chance that Starmer will resign – he must be forced out. Time the labour back benchers colluded with the Tories and the rest of the House.
February 13, 2026
‘ There is little chance that Starmer will resign – he must be forced out. Time the labour back benchers colluded with the Tories and the rest of the House.’
That is not going to happen.
Neither will there be physical force or violence – despite predictions of civil war. Tommy Robinson is closely monitored on the basis that he has the largest following. The armed forces are in the hands of politically approved officers who would not contemplate a military takeover of the sort that was rumoured in the days of Harold Wilson.
People will continue to grumble but they will put up with things.
February 13, 2026
I can only conclude that history indicates that we are only likely to get what you are rightly suggesting is very badly needed, from a Government that is neither Labour nor conservative.
February 13, 2026
Farage says that, if elected, Reform will not restrict Cabinet posts to Parliamentarians. He appears to mean that outsiders will be brought in to apply business discipline to government systems and spending.
I welcome this. Money is hard to make and easy to spend. Parliament has largely abandoned its duty to taxpayers in favour of appeasing the payroll vote in all its countless manifestations. A fresh approach is needed.
I do not think democratic accountability would be affected. Non-Parliamentarians may still be examined in committee or at the Bar of the House, and the PM will still bear ultimate responsibility. All in all, it seems a sound idea.
February 13, 2026
What about Dominic Cummings and his team, who were hounded out. The same would have with the No 10 Civil Service rebelling and other department heads. They are in charge; they’ve made that clear.
It was ironic that it was Boris and Sunak who got in trouble over cake when they walked into a workplace meeting and were hijacked, when their staff were the ones partying, not them, yet none of the employees appeared to be disciplined or dismissed.
February 13, 2026
The employees did not make the law.
Johnson was filmed at a party eating cake.
Also in the garden – at close proximity and with no masks, drinking wine and eating cheese.
February 13, 2026
How do we get rid of the bad ones?
February 13, 2026
Unfortunately just having better ministers or officials only helps at the margin. Without any market incentives and threats and no mechanism other than bureaucracy for capital allocation it seems inevitable that public services will be bad. The NHS and its practices are an example writ large. Whether its massaging the waiting lists to make them seem to be falling or importing thousands of less qualified foreign doctors to the detriment of our own UK trained (and paid for) ones. It’s not because of any one person’s or group of people’s incompetence, negligence or bad faith, it’s just the way things are in a nationalised industry with no price and capital allocation mechanism. Competition is the key. Many public sector entities (quangos etc) would be best just closed. As far as possible others should be put into the private sector and the state needs to be able to purchase services from among competing providers.
February 13, 2026
Sir John
Productivity and service in the same sentence. Then you drew on ‘running parts of the public sector as an Executive Councillor and as a Minister’
These discussions over recent week if not months all come back to no one is managing, actually managing and taking responsibility, real responsibility in ensuring everyone has the opportunity to advance and fulfil potential. Sure, there are talks about talks, then the side lines of personal political indoctrination. The need to whip and remind those that wish to stray that they need to bow down to those who selected and paid for their campaign’s and who is the leader of the gang, the boss. I should correct myself there, yes there is management, management of people’s thoughts, the sculpting of a nation to be a clone of a personal political image that a dictator wishes. But there is no Government, because democracy is not allowed, challenges are not permitted. So managing and responsibility are not part of the religion, the ‘plan’
If you take the taxpayer shilling/penny you are part of the collective the obedient slave, if you don’t rest assured your time will come. The Country the People, the services they pay for? These are sidelines, there is no such thing as Service by those empowered and paid for by the taxpayer. As such productivity has nothing to do with anything other than a distraction of the shaping of a people in a personal image.
February 13, 2026
As someone working in innovation for a private business you only thrive when designing and selling a product customers want at a price they think acceptable. If customers are not at the heart of what you do you become irrelevant and go out of business so I fully support the article.
I do wonder if there is a second issue that has grown a lot since 1997 and that is what the civil service and the public sector is asked to do and how they are asked to do it. Are they to a fairly large extent hamstrung by a jungle of legislation meaning they have to consult and get approval from all manner of organisations before something actually gets done? That cannot help productivity
February 13, 2026
Last November ONS figures showed that public sector productivity fell by 0.7% in the 3 months to June. That was the steepest fall in nearly 3 years. This is all going to plan of course for socialism depends upon making and keeping people poor. But this fall in public sector productivity, and even the public sector’s truculence to government legislation, is nothing compared to the damage to the economy and our national security as a result of the pursuit of Net Zero. Even the Tony Blair Institute has described Miliband’s Clear Power 2030 project, which NESO has costed to be “over £40bn annually, as “not fit for purpose” in a recent report. Michael Kelly, Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge and a former Government chief scientific adviser, said the scale and cost of rebuilding the UK’s electricity grid is so vast the country is heading for an economic crash once the full impact of expensive energy triggers an inevitable backlash from households and businesses. He has costed Net Zero at £1.4 trillion.
February 13, 2026
He must be wrong, as Miliband said I’d be £300 better off with reduced energy bills ….its in their manifesto
February 13, 2026
GB News reporting that Sir Chris Wormal is to get a £260k pay-off …..he was sacked ….only in the public sector
Reply Was he sacked? If so what for? Did they go through the correct procedures? It looks like an ex gratia payment to secure his removal.It is not a redundancy as the post remains.
February 13, 2026
There is now some doubt that he was ‘sacked’ but rather allowed to ‘step-down’ ….and thereby allowed to one month per year service, in settlement ie £260k (maybe paid off to keep the government line) …and his huge pension (and possible peerage)
Anyway, not a good message when this government hasn’t any money
February 13, 2026
BBC reporting – The cabinet office said the move was ”by mutual agreement” ….so allowed to resign with taxpayers money, NOT sacked
The cabinet office has once again brought much needed clarity
February 13, 2026
I think we need to include ‘Victims Compensation’ for failures in containing crime and for failures in maintaining medical standards in the NHS too.
Those are measurable productivity failures. I wonder whether you factored that in JR?
In combination they produce catastrophic numbers, I wonder what the ‘Rape Gang industry’ is going to cost us? Measured in terms not only in compensation but in the loss of productivity for life of those damaged individuals. Each of those girls could have been expected to produce a British family and now 250,000 British families will not be forthcoming. What a price for the nation to pay.
Will you support Rupert Lowe’s efforts where you can please?
February 13, 2026
And expensive dismissal claims and compensation claims such as the one made by Starmer this week.
I would also appreciate your support for Rupert Lowe’s team’s efforts, please. Try to encourage as many Tory MPs to stand with him; it’s not a good look on them that they aren’t, although I note Nick Timothy has taken action.
Reply I wish Rupert Lose well with his Inquiry into the shaming rape gang crimes.
February 13, 2026
I hold no brief or sympathy for the Civil Service, but it must be very difficult and frustrating to improve productivity when they keep chopping and changing due to the incontinence of legislation and incompetence of government ministers with their crackpot schemes they wish to experiment on us with as guinea pigs. How can anyone cope with 15 or is it now 16 orders and then 15 or 16 u-turns when it is proved to be rubbish. Wes Streeting is now saying he is instituting GIRFT (Get it right first time). I’m sure the staff in the NHS do their best and hope it applies to government as a whole and not to the shambles of the last 18 months. In the old computer parlance ‘put rubbish in, rubbish comes out’. Same with the political personnel.
February 13, 2026
When interviewed, he should be asked for specific examples of when and who (which staff) aren’t regularly getting it right the first time. Who is being tasked with improvement? They’re just wishy-washy targets that can’t be checked, and people are getting sick of the bull.
February 14, 2026
I think GIRFT refers to policy, not clinical – at least I hope so. I think the clinical staff on the whole do a good job but the politicians get in the way with endless forms to be filled in, endless targets to be missed. As far as I can see clinical staff, including GP’s spend half their time box ticking just so some goof of a minister can stand up in the Commons to spout some statistic or other then bin it all. What do all the managers do apart from inventing new things for their clinicians to do to protect their own waste of time jobs?
February 13, 2026
I have had to use re NHS a lot lately, and whilst there’s much to be grateful for, I resent being told repeatedly that abusive behaviour will not be tolerated. Get the service attitude right, and if you are ‘abused’, remember the patient may be at a low point, distressed and frustrated by the failings that are undoubtedly there. Rather, ask: ‘Who is there for the benefit of whom?’
To quote a proverb of Solomon: ‘A soft answer turns away wrath.’ It works.
February 13, 2026
The UK Home Office has openly referred to asylum seekers in hotel accommodation as “illegal migrants” in an official post.
In a recent announcement shared across X, Instagram, and Facebook, the department stated: “Illegal migrants living in hotels have been banned from using taxpayer funded taxis for medical appointments’
Lammy said ‘ “WE ARE CRACKING DOWN ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION BUT WE HAVE TO LET THEM IN FIRST BEFORE WE CAN CALL THEM ILLEGAL OTHERWISE IT’S NOT FAIR.”
This is negative productivity.
February 13, 2026
DVLA are still using cheques. It is just ridiculous, cost of postage, time printing and posting. Several other govt depts are behind the times. It causes problems with banks now because many don’t have photograph cheque submission for business accounts as they do private.
The amount of work that is now done digitally for HMRC should have reduced staff numbers by more than half. They don’t even answer the phone now. Any private sector manager could make useful suggestions but the truth is the union control in the public sector takes decades to readjust, so they can work from home for 4 days for 5 days pay and make productivity reducing actions like that.
February 13, 2026
I’ve had first hand experience of this, returning to a government department after a couple of decades, they went all digital and hitec, and increased the number of staff, saying that they needed to keep the old systems in case of problems, and backup new systems to ensure accuracy ….so a x3 increase in staff and IT maintenance & compliance
February 13, 2026
John,
I had a quick read of your report. For me it misses a number of other dimensions.
One being intellectual property. Another being use of cheap immigrant workers, and offshoring work abroad. In both those areas there are massive problems with what the UK has been doing.
The country does not have a vision for where it wants to be in the world markets, does it really want to compete at the commodity cheap as chips end of the spectrum? Does it want to compete at the best quality and innovation so it’s easy to charge premium prices end of the spectrum, or somewhere in the middle? Not only do we not have any vision for where the private sector should be in those spectrums (and maybe the best answer is leave it to the markets, and stop the state manipulation) but we don’t have a vision for where the public sector should be in those spectrum either.
We also don’t have a vision for who the public sector is there to serve, a lot of people getting vast sums spent on them by the public sector should not be our problem.
Good to see you stimulate discussion of these issues.
Cheers
February 13, 2026
another thing is the massive regional variation in public services in different places within the UK. for example I know at least one condition that merits immediate hospital admission if spotted by a GP in one part of the country, yet other parts of the country regard it as trivia and ignore it completely. there are massive differences in percentages of patients given heart stents, and other places that just leave such patients to die.
February 13, 2026
You will get no improvement in Civil Service and public sector productvity until you reduce the numbers employed significantly. The larger the organisation the more non productive activity will go on.
I know two people who left University and went into local government 20 years ago. Both left within a year because they could not stand the culture. Everything was done at the slowest pace, and in one case the person kept finishing their day’s work by lunchtime. They were constantly told to make it last all day.
So two bright, capable young people returned to the private sector, where both have done well. That was 20 years ago, so how much worse is it now?
February 13, 2026
We really need to cut down on the huge number of public service employees. There does urgently need to be a lot of redundancies in the Civil Service.
February 13, 2026
Rupert Lowe has launched Restore Britain as a political party.
We have joined.
We need to come together under a proven leader.
Commeth the Hour, commeth the Man.
Thanks be to God!
February 14, 2026
Does everyone’s comments have to wait for
Moderation ?
Or just mine