A laudable and substantive critique. Bravo.

And that was a cheap hatchet job. When you have actually got something to say about Barnets actual plans, let us know.

Sorry, what’s the point of this? Did you have a bad flight with bmibaby one time?

Can you honestly not see that the public finances in this country are in a dire state? With the state of things, it is absolutely vital that we trial as many ways as possible of getting the cost of government down. Barnet’s easyCouncil is just one method. If it works, others will copy. If services are drastically affected, others won’t. Either way, we need to see what can be done.

Not up to your usual very high standards, Dave.

Lord, with tedious predictability criticism of cost cutting innovation resorts immediately to the “which schools and hospitals will you close” brand of hysterical scaremongering.

Maybe they will allow the residents of Barnet to buy in or out of the “diversity” services offered (or not) rather than throwing old people out onto the streets?

“‘We do apologize for the four-day delay in departure.”

I was under the impression the budget airlines could at least match, if not beat, the full-expense carriers for punctuality.

Also, if the next government saves money by cutting out free cappuccinos.. good for them.

Always good to go down so well with our rightwing friends.

If a flight is more than 2 hours delayed , let alone four days, you’d be entitled to some serious dosh; love to see the councils having some of this discipline enforced on them.

More serious point; why can’t we just see what is being offered an evaluate it, it may be crap but it may work.

H McRae of The Indy pointed out that the Hong Kong government spends 15% of GP yet has the third highest standard of science and maths education and the third lowest infant mortality in the World. What all parties need to to deliver are high quality essentials and value for money.

Councils need to list every person who is employed, their job description, hours worked, their salary, pension, holiday entitlement and any other benefit. Councils need to prove every person employed is essential and provides value for money.

Mark @ 3

“it is absolutely vital that we trial as many ways as possible of getting the cost of government down.”

How much money was saved by turfing the mentally ill out onto the streets? That ‘trial’ has resulted with our prisions full. Hardly seems worth it!

No much of a serious conversation on this.

When Local Authority Chief Executives are allowed to pay Solace Enterprises, a subsidiary of their own association, to set the remuneration packages of Local Authority Chief Executives is it surprising that so many of them earn more than Gordon Brown?

And the profit made from the money that ratepayers pay for this “consultancy” work goes to the Solace Foundation- which pays it out to send them on various junkets.

You couldn’t make it up.

‘But what if local authorities really were run like bmibaby, as the British Midland subsidiary preposterously styles itself?’

I don’t know, how is running local council services like they’re Concord going?

[11] Jim

Link me some info and I’ll have a read.

I still stand by my view that feasible cost-cutting measures need to be trialled. If they don’t work, or the effects are worse than expected then look to reverse them. But as things stand we can’t afford not to try.

Dave, a party which has no serious ideas about how to save money will be out of power for a long, long time.

So, are there any ideas from the left-of-centre on how to save money?

Because it seems to me that the blog which aims to “re-vitalise the liberal-left through discussion and action”, is not discussing any.

Fascinated to see Hammersmith and Fulham Council back in the news again:

“In June 1988 the Audit Commission was tipped off by someone working on the swaps desk of Goldman Sachs that the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham had a massive exposure to interest rate swaps. When the commission contacted the council, the chief executive told them not to worry as ‘everybody knows that interest rates are going to fall’; the treasurer thought the interest rate swaps were a ‘nice little earner’. The controller of the commission, Howard Davies realised that the council had put all of its positions on interest rates going down; he sent a team in to investigate.

“By January 1989 the commission obtained legal opinions from two Queen’s Counsel. Although they did not agree, the commission preferred the opinion which made it ultra vires for councils to engage in interest rate swaps. Moreover interest rates had gone up from 8% to 15%. The auditor and the commission then went to court and had the contracts declared illegal (appeals all the way up to the House of Lords failed); the five banks involved lost millions of pounds. Many other local authorities had been engaging in interest rate swaps in the 1980s, although Hammersmith was unusual in betting all one way.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_rate_swap

It was hugely fortunate for residents in the borough when a court case established that the interest rate swaps were indeed ultra vires for the council (ie beyond its statutory powers) because that was taken to mean that the bank, which constituted the counterparty, should not have contracted the swaps with the council and would have to bear the losses – which ran to several hundred millions, as I recall.

In all, a salutary lesson of what happens when local authorities try to get ultra smart. I wonder what became of the council’s chief executive at the time?

@charlie2

I don’t understand the logic of your argument. The fact government spending as a percentage of GDP in Hong Kong says nothing about efficiency in English local government.

1. Hong Kong chooses not to provide welfare benefits to the old, sick, disabled, poor and unemployed. Over a third of UK government spending is on welfare benefits like these. I know that there is a solid school of thought on the right that the unemployed, sick and disabled are lazy wasters who should receive no benefits at all (why when they could earn literally pounds cleaning shoes on street corners or by selling a kidney or two), but that view is thankfully in the minority even in the Tory party. The UK simply would not tolerate Hong Kong style inequality (among the highest in the world) or poverty, hence we spend a lot combatting this.

2. We choose to pay for our healthcare through a state-funded free-at-the-point-of-need system rather than private insurance, adding another 8% of GDP to government spending.

3. Hong Kong’s GDP is inflated by it’s role as an offshore financial centre for the world making comparisons to GDP doubtful. If London gained independence we would see a similar decline in spending as a % of GDP.

Why not come back and demonstrate how Hong Kong are more efficient rather than using spurious evidence that shows nothing more than Hong Kong makes very different choices to the UK in terms of the society it wants and the functions of government?

2. We choose to pay for our healthcare through a state-funded national health service

@16: “We choose to pay for our healthcare through a state-funded national health service”

As do most countries in western Europe. The Consumer Health Powerhouse – a healthcare think-tank based in Sweden – ranks national healthcare systems each year. This shows the ranking matrix for 33 countries in 2009:
http://www.healthpowerhouse.com/files/Index%20matrix%20EHCI%202009%20091001%20final%20A3%20sheet.pdf

The NHS in Britain usually shows up relatively poorly – in 2009, it was rated at 14 out of 33 countries covered in the index. The distinctive feature of the NHS is that healthcare services are not only financed out of general taxation but healthcare services are also provided by a state-owned national organisation. The outcome is that the NHS is the largest employer in the world after India Rail and the Chinese army. The typical setup in other west European countries is that the state runs a social insurance system to pay for personal healthcare costs but it doesn’t centrally manage the provision of healthcare services.

Btw this from the OECD Factbook for 2009 shows comparative data for national spending on healthcare as a percentage of national GDP:
http://titania.sourceoecd.org/vl=3265741/cl=22/nw=1/rpsv/factbook2009/10/02/01/10-02-01-g1.htm

Mark @ 14

We both know that once cut services will not simply be re-instated. The evidence suggests that we end up spending vastly more money trying to rectify the previous cost cutting measure.

Care in the ‘community’ (or seaside resorts) was supposed to save us money, but all we have done is move people from mental wards into prisons:

http://www.communitycare.co.uk/Articles/2009/02/04/110622/prison-reform-trust-urges-action-on-mental-health-of-inmates.html

“Care in the community” become, don’t give a toss and then throw them into jail when they fuck up.

We are now building jails to house the people we used to house in mental wards.

@18: “We are now building jails to house the people we used to house in mental wards”

True enough – but what conclusions can we draw from that about the quality of other, mainstream healthcare services?

“Thousands of patients are feared to be dying needlessly every year because of poor communication between hospital staff, faulty equipment and a lack of skills.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article2141382.ece

“Accidents, errors and mishaps in hospital affect as many as one in 10 in-patients, claim researchers. The report in the journal Quality and Safety in Health Care said up to half of these were preventable.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7116711.stm

The NHS has seen a year-on-year fall in productivity despite the billions of pounds of investment in the service, latest figures show. The data from the Office for National Statistics showed a fall of 2% a year from 2001 to 2005 across the UK.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7610103.stm

@bob

Many countries in Western Europe. Not Hong Kong. The UK health system performs well on efficiency measures compared to many other countries- it’s cheap and it gets ok (but not world beating) quality. Maybe if we spent 11% of GDP on health like the US rather than only 7-8% of GDP we can have the quality too – our system is already better thanks to the efficiency that our public system gives us compared to the inefficient private sector.

The point remains – what on earth does the fact Hong Kong government spending as a % of GDP tell us about local government efficiency on England?

@20: “The point remains – what on earth does the fact Hong Kong government spending as a % of GDP tell us about local government efficiency on England?”

Not much – especially as HK (a marvellous place btw) is one of the most densely populated places on earth and has very limited governmental provision for social safety nets. For alternative models of welfare systems, I think we need to look to comparisons with other west European countries.

It seems not to be widely appreciated that at least up to the onset of the financial crisis in 2007, the burden of taxation in Britain – meaning: total tax revenues as a percentage of national GDP – was lower than in most European countries: the most notable exception being Germany, which had a marginally lower burden. Try this OECD source (scroll down):
http://lysander.sourceoecd.org/pdf/factbook2009/302009011e-10-04-01.pdf

Councils need to list every person who is employed, their job description, hours worked, their salary, pension, holiday entitlement and any other benefit. Councils need to prove every person employed is essential and provides value for money.

Stop wasting my money with your daft ideas, thanks.

@23 at

Good point, and one those advocating that every single transaction a public body engages in is published online and that the scope of FOI legislation should be widened would do well to remember.

It’s like they think this could happen by magic without requiring anyone to be employed to do the work. Strategically I see why this is attractive to those on the right (the theory being spending would be curtailed if this happens) but it’s just unworkable. FOI legislation as it is costs a significant sum (due to the sheer number of requests about e.g. How many oven gloves the Downing Street shop sold last year).

@19: “We both know that once cut services will not simply be re-instated.”

Do we? I thought that we were currently providing more services through government use of general taxation than at any other point in human history. Why is it logical to assume that cut services are never coming back?

Believe it or not, there are definite signs of progress of a kind:

“What should a government do when it stands accused of creating a monstrous skills ‘quangocracy’ too complex and baffling for the average employer? Perhaps only the current administration would create a new quango with the task of fixing the problem.” [20 May 2008]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/may/20/furthereducation.uk

“Hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of cuts to UK education and training quangos have been proposed by the government’s chief skills guru, on the basis that ‘we’re going to have to do more with less’. Chris Humphries’ radical plans include mergers, re­moving government funding from organisations and subjecting every education quango to a regular check-up to see whether it is worth keeping.” [21 October 2009]
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/000ddef4-be62-11de-b4ab-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1

17. sevillista . Read H McRae of The Indy – he also mentioned the high standard of science and maths education in Hong Kong; vitally important if we are to increase our advanced manufacturing capability.

23.Sy.This is aquick way of councils to demonstrate they are providing value for money. All the information would beheld by human resources and accounts departments. A problem for many councils is that many people do not think they are delivering value for money .

The problem for Labour is that a very percentage of those people who work for government are in the unions and many voters do not think they will ever undertake any action which reduces employment as it will reduce income to the party. Many people are not convinced that the many white collar workers employed by government provide value for money.

@charlie2

You were trying to make the logical connection between Hong Kong spending 15% of GDP on government and UK government inefficiency. And it seems you still are, though you can’t seem to find any arguments to support that in response to me pointing out its logical flaws.

And international tests mean little – not enough English schools particpated in the last education study to give a statistically significant result, and there are a number of statistical issues with making many inferences from the data (eg pupils and schools have few incentives to take it seriously). But then you knew all that – they’re the same arguments I’m sure you used when we came 4th on the international education comparisons a few years back.

Come back when you have some comparable data showing Hong Kong government administration is more efficient.

This is aquick way of councils to demonstrate they are providing value for money.

No it isn’t. It’s a time-consuming and expensive way to produce a handy checklist so you and likeminded Taxpayers’ Alliance types might (you hope) find things to squeal about. Councils are (I assume) already subject to regular audits and are accountable to their taxpayers through the ballot box.

In the name of transparency an’ all that, surely there’s a case for local council tax payers to know about the salaries paid to senior officials working for their local district or county councils. Some salaries I know of are staggeringly high compared with, say, the PM’s or SME executives so I believe council tax payers are entitled to an explanation or two.

The usual well-worn pretext is that the high salaries are essential to attract able officials or to discourage them from slipping across the border to work for the neighbouring council instead, which is how we get the regular salary creep. That stuff about “your obedient servant” went out of the window long since – the prevailing spin seems to be that ours is not to ask the reason why but to shut up and pay up.

In the name of transparency an’ all that, surely there’s a case for local council tax payers to know about the salaries paid to senior officials working for their local district or county councils. Some salaries I know of are staggeringly high compared with, say, the PM’s or SME executives so I believe council tax payers are entitled to an explanation or two.

No problem with that, but it’s clear that’s not what Charlie2 wants for his little list.

@bob

So you want to pay for an army of bureaucrats to produce this information on e.g. every purchase of paperclips made? Interesting to make “couldn’t make it up- it costs money to run an office but exceptionally poor VFM.

Public sector pay often compares poorly with similarly skilled private sector work, particularly in London and the SE. For example, the chief exec of an organisation that spends over a billion pounds per year like say Surrey is paid less than a junior analyst in an investment bank.

Of course you can enforce uncompetitive pay rates across the public sector (e.g. a salary cap of 30k) but that will merely result in poorer quality staff, high vacancy rates and greater inefficiency as skilled staff shun public jobs. This already happens in London public services as low salaries and difficult work leaves the best staff looking elsewhere for work leaving the schools that need the best teachers with the inexperienced and the poor quality teachers no-one else wants along with high vacancy rates.

@29 “Councils are (I assume) already subject to regular audits and are accountable to their taxpayers through the ballot box.”

Simply being voted for doesn’t make the council accountable, if the public know bugger all about what the council is doing, and how it’s doing it. Perhaps we should scrap the glossy magazines I get from my council, and spend the money on making useful data publicly available.

As for the point about paperclips, councils wouldn’t have to spend hundreds or thousands searching through dusty files if the information was already clearly catalogued and freely available online.

@kentron

Cataloguing such unimportant data on transactions will require significant effort to collate.

You would employ an army of collaters to do this work and all to publish literally trillions of mundane and useless information that is only good for trivia (I can see this keeping Littlejohn in columns for life). A database of this size will cost millions of manhours to maintain and update (e.g. every employee involved in procurement no matter how minor will need a way of registering every time they make a transaction).

Shockingly bad VFM for so little gain.

@34: Surely such records are already being maintained, and it would simply be a matter of a web-interface for the public to view them? For any of the companies I’ve worked for (all large, but none with the resources of a government department), such a change could take place in a matter of hours.

Alternatively, if such records aren’t being kept, why the hell aren’t departments keeping track of their own spending? Again, any company I’ve worked for already keeps such information, though obviously for private use. Certainly, there are costs to starting the system, but relatively few to maintain it. (If you’re buying 200k paperclips, as seems to be the favoured example around here, the extra effort of adding “200k paperclips – bought xx/xx/09 by Mr. Smith – price £2000” to a database is minimal.)

The general argument that it would ‘cost too much to collate and only be of benefit to rabid columnists’, does seem strikingly reminiscent of the arguments Mr. Martin used to block investigations into MP’s expenses.

@kentron

Aggregated information is collated, audited and published already, and so it should be.

The issue is in requiring every single transaction to be published on a centralised public sector database. What’s your magic solution to do this at zero cost and without imposing massive additional bureaucracy on every single public sector worker? What do you hope to find out from publishing trillions of different transactions other than providing some Littlejohnian “couldn’t make it up” spurious examples of waste? Is that worth all this bureaucracy?

And you are wrong on the private sector collecting info that is this detailed on every transaction they make. Info provided to shareholders is far less detailed than info the public sector already provides to Parliament and taxpayers (eg if as a shareholder of a bank I asked about how much money was spent on alcohol on expenses or how much company money went to Spearmint Rhinos I’d get short shrift).

@36: As I’ve pointed out already, I don’t think adding a line to a database is “massive additional bureaucracy.” Your argument in #36 is the same as #34, which would create the circularity of my #37 mirroring #35, etc.

“And you are wrong on the private sector collecting info that is this detailed on every transaction they make.

Eh, no. I wasn’t talking about the information provided in a shareholder’s report, and I wasn’t talking in general. I was talking about databases I see with my own eyes. So unless you want to get metaphysical on my ass, I’m not wrong.

@kentron

1. There is no existing website with a centralised database like this in existence. One would need to be created and cost money to operate and maintain.

2. All 6 million public sector workers would either need editing rights to this database, or alternatively all transactions and accompanying details (eg receipts and justifications) would need to be sent to people employed for this purpose.

3. There will be implications for the time public sector workers need to spend on (pointless IMO) form-filling and bureaucracy.

4. The issue is on info online held centrally rather than info held locally for business reasons. I doubt any large organisation holds databases like these due to the administrative burden involved. Why do you think the taxpayers right to know about public sector transactions exceeds shareholders right to know about private sector transactions? Why not push for the private sector to make a similar database available to shareholders?

@32: “So you want to pay for an army of bureaucrats to produce this information on e.g. every purchase of paperclips made? Interesting to make “couldn’t make it up- it costs money to run an office but exceptionally poor VFM.”

That’s utter nonsense. All that is needed in respect of salaries – the point I was making @30 – is a simple council resolution in each council instructing the chief executive to arrange to have the salaries of the senior officials displayed on the council website. I don’t think I’d have any serious difficulty drafting the necessary resolution if that is the sticking point.

Councillors, the local press and local council tax players will be able to monitor compliance. The regular annual Audit Commission report on each council will simply state whether the salaries of senior officials are in the public domain or not.

Simple. No army of bureaucrats is required. The cost of procedures as outlined here is minimal.

I really believe this is information which council tax payers are entitled to know as a matter of transparency and the regular display will do a little to help arrest the unjustified upward creep of the “remuneration” of senior officials in local government to ridiculous levels.

Btw at various stages, I have been an elected member of two councils and a senior official in a third.

@bob

Sorry – reread your point and it wasn’t about publishing all transactions like I thought it was.

Nothing to stop councils doing this though – as a former coucillor I’m sure you’ll appreciate the merits of Whitehall not interfering by passing legislation to mandate this

@40: “as a former coucillor I’m sure you’ll appreciate the merits of Whitehall not interfering by passing legislation to mandate this”

Having worked in both local and then central government as a civil servant, I don’t subscribe to the notion: central government bad – local government good. Frankly, I don’t have much faith in this new fad of localism.

There are persuasive reasons why central institutions are needed to audit and, when necessary, enforce compliance with the law upon councils. Consider the following:

“A council at the centre of a police fraud inquiry has been criticised in an independent report for blatant junketing which cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/40990.stm

“A former deputy leader of Rotherham Council spent thousands of pounds of a charity’s cash on prostitutes, lavish hotels, meals, and outings, a court heard.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2500037.stm

In the late 1980s, Hammersmith and Fulham council lost hundreds of millions in interest swap trades which were ultra vires – beyond its statutory powers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_rate_swap

I’m not greatly impressed with the financial competence of council after so many stashed millions in balances with banks in Iceland:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7660741.stm

Not all councils were so foolish.

Why has my earlier response to @40 been censored out?