Whitehall Watch

So, it is now official, we are going to have Spending Review 2013.

First, let’s clear up some confusions – as far as we can – about where SR2013 “fits”.

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The Chancellor delivered this year’s Budget with a lot of shouting – but the sound and fury disguises the essentially dolittle nature of his proposals. The main, modest, changes he proposes mostly do not kick in for 2, 3 or 4 years, when most agree what we need is action now to kick-start the economy.

Like the Chancellor’s rather shouty delivery, growth in the economy continues to be choked off and is forecast to continue to be stuttering.

Much of this is as result of the Chancellor’s own actions – by cutting public spending too quickly but also, and even more importantly, by convincing businesses and households that in 2010 we were on the brink of financial collapse, fatally undermining business and consumer confidence.

Mr Osborne continues to blame anyone and anything for the British economies poor performance, except himself and his policies. It is true that world, and especially European, economic performance has been poor – but this is also because of austerity policies Mr Osborne has supported. Other parts of the world not pursing reckless austerity are doing better.

The only real surprise in the Budget is the size of the massive Whitehall underspend of £11bn – including under-spending on investments – are a sign not of good but of very poor control over spending. This money was intended to provide public services people rely on – to fail to deliver them will be a disaster for many.

I have just created two new news feeds using the rather useful *Scoop.It*.

One is a newsfeed counterpart to Whitehall Watch with all the news stories I come across that are worth reading if you are into *Whitehall Watching* and is called – surprisingly – Whitehall Watch: http://www.scoop.it/t/whitehall-watch

The other is more narrowly around the topic of *The Politics of Public Spending*, a subject on which I teach, research and advise. You can find that one here: http://www.scoop.it/t/the-politics-of-public-spending

In both cases this is stuff that I find interesting/useful. Posting stories doesn’t imply any endorsement. If you find them useful, please share.

The Fabian Commission on Future Spending Choices asked me for some ideas about the public spending process in the UK and here are my suggestions for reform: Continue reading →

As some of you may know already, I am about to leave a Business School (MBS) and join a School of Social Sciences (Politics) (both at the University of Manchester, so not a big move in one sense). This may be unduly influencing my thinking, but the question I want to ask in this post is: am I part of a trend? Continue reading →

Su Maddock  @sumaddock

Mid-Staffs Hospital is the tip of an iceberg that has been hiding neglect for many years. It is true poor practice was made worse by the target culture, but lets be honest –  abuse, neglect and poor care have a long history . It is not just the abuse that is horrific but equally worrying is the level of complacency among senior staff and their vilification of whistle-blowers.  Challenging complacency is not easy and those that do are often subject to ridicule themselves, many leave because their promotion prospects decline each time they voice concerns. Continue reading →

I somewhat mischievously responded to a tweet from Chuka Umuna, the Labour shadow business secretary, that the reason that only 1.2% (7 out of 576) government infrastructure projects was ‘completed’ was because there was no-one left (in the civil service) to implement them.

This was flippant, admittedly, but it is possibly not too far from the truth. Continue reading →

Both the parties that make up the current Coalition government had great fun at New Labour’s expense criticising their “target culture”. All that time-wasting, box-ticking, form-filling, behaviour-distorting, nonsense would be swept away if they were in power. How did that work out then? Continue reading →

In a previous post - Measuring Leviathan: Big Government and the Myths of Public Spending - I tried to explain and explore some of the mythology that has grown up around public spending and – probably more importantly – put forward some ideas about how we ought to think about public spending. I used the past 50 years or so of UK public spending to illustrate my points. It especially showed some things that people generally find very surprising about the last Labour government.

An academic colleague posted a response, which I quote in full below. I have chosen to respond in full because this comment rather helpfully illustrates many of the problems I was trying to clarify. So apologies to my colleague if this seems like an ‘attack’ (or strictly speaking ‘counter-attack’) – it is meant in a constructive way and to further the debate. Anyone else is welcome to join in. Continue reading →

The political debate about public spending in the UK is bedevilled by myths and spin about how much we actually spend. So I thought it was time for a little myth-busting primer, with some pretty diagrams, about how we should be discussing public spending….  Continue reading →

By David Richards and Patrick Diamond[1]

As another year ends and a new one rolls in, it is somewhat apposite to reflect on the launch of another PASC inquiry into Whitehall which seeks to take stock of the Coalition’s Civil Service Reform Plan published in June last year.  From Fulton onwards, ostensibly Whitehall appears to have been in a state of almost permanent revolution.  The list of initiatives by various governments in the intervening years is exhaustive, but any highlights programme would include: The Reorganisation of Central Government; Rayernism; FMI; Next Steps; Continuity and Change I and II; Modernising Government; Reforming Public Services; Transforming Public Service and The Governance of Britain.   It is therefore of little surprise that the first question posed by this new PASC inquiry is deceptively simple – Is the Civil Service in need of radical reform?   Yet, scratch below the surface and the answer to this small conundrum is by no means straightforward.  For in many ways, the modern history of Civil Service reform can be characterized as Janus-faced. Why? Overtime, all governments have adopted a common default setting in their approach to this subject: on the one hand, a tendency to caricature the Whitehall machine as something akin to a ‘Rolls Royce’; while on the other, deriding its culture and organizational practices for constraining effective policy making, in terms of formulation, implementation, or both. Continue reading →

Here’s one worthy of BBC radio 4’s “More or Less”. According to the Coalition government they “reduced the deficit by 25%” – this mantra has been repeated over and over again by Ministers. But is it true?  Continue reading →