Today, I have published a report for the Free Enterprise Group, Weight Watchers for Whitehall, with some ideas for the forthcoming public spending review.
They include adopting the OECD (rather than OBR) measure of public spending for greater transparency, halving the number of separate Whitehall government departments and strictly enforcing central pay controls.
I wrote for the Daily Telegraph today explaining how this could be delivered here, and discussed the proposals on BBC 1’s Daily Politics here.
Andrew
Interesting idea. I can imagine a number of efficiencies coming from this, not only within departments but also in the running and presentation of government.
Presumably this would require coalition consent. Any idea if this seems at all amenable to the Liberal Democrats?
How long would this take to implement? Is there any chance it could happen within the two years leading up to the general election? And would the benefits be felt by then? I’d imagine that would be an important consideration for people.
If you had to demonstrate the concept with just one merger, where would you start?
And the schematic on pages 7 and 19 seems to give a very helpful overview of the proposal - only it’s blurred and unreadable on the PDF. Could you post a clear version, please?
Thanks.