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Smarter Government

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury in the other place earlier today. "With your permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement on Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government, a command paper that I have presented to Parliament today. This Government are very proud of Britain’s public services and Britain’s public servants: our doctors and nurses who treat 1 million people every 36 hours; our police teams who brought down crime by one-third; the teachers and support staff in our schools who have helped record numbers of young people do well in their exams; our jobcentre staff who have helped 2 million move off unemployment since last November; and, of course, our Armed Forces, serving with such distinction in Afghanistan and around the world. We always knew that with the right backing, Britain’s public servants could transform the quality and the standards of public service in this country, and over the past decade they have—not by some happy accident but by the work of careful design and determined investment. NHS investment doubled, education investment is up by 60 per cent and investment in public order and safety is up by 50 per cent. We did this while overdelivering by 20 per cent our Gershon review savings of £26.5 billion in the three years to 2008. Thanks to that effort, we have now reached the point where the investment gap that we inherited in 1997 has been fixed. We have not only reached but exceeded international averages for spending on education and health. We are now at a turning point where, in the decade ahead, we can capitalise on the great strengths that we have created and set out a new way of driving standards in public services up while we drive the deficit down. I am therefore laying in the House today a Command Paper entitled Putting the Frontline First: Smarter Government that shows how the Government will set about that task. It draws together over 12 months’ work from literally thousands of people from across public life, the private sector, charities and voluntary groups, leaders of public services and those on the front line. In particular, I want to thank Sir Michael Bichard and public servants from 63 councils, 34 primary care trusts and 13 police authorities who have contributed to our trials of Total Place, and the many local areas undertaking similar work; Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Professor Nigel Shadbolt; Martha Lane Fox and her Digital Inclusion Taskforce; our efficiency advisers Gerry Grimstone, the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Coles, Martin Read and Martin Jay; and leaders from across the third sector who have advanced the relationship between the Government and civic society. Today’s command paper summarises what we have learned from that work. Our starting point is a relentless focus on standards. We are ambitious for Britain’s future and we know that we can do well in the years to come, but we know, too, that Britain’s families will more readily succeed and do well in life if they are supported by first-class public services. So we will make first-class standards in public services not a privilege for the few but the right of all by setting out new entitlements to high-quality public services in health, education, policing and, in time, social care, backed where appropriate by the force of law. To help citizens to hold local services to account, we will revolutionise the free availability of comparative information on police efficiency, hospital costs and local authority spending. We will make sure that services, where they can, will fit in with the demands of busy modern life by putting many more services online faster. We will redouble our efforts to get more people online. Today I can announce £30 million more to get 1 million more people online by 2012. We will free public data created using taxpayers’ money, including Ordnance Survey mapping and boundary data, and we will make it easier for civic society to contribute to public life by pressing ahead with a new social investment wholesale bank and testing social impact bonds. Our second principle will be to free up the front line to innovate and collaborate by cutting back on ring-fenced budgets and national targets. I am therefore setting out today 10 steps drawn up by myself and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to provide our local councils with a range of trading, joint venture and regulatory flexibility. We will cut the cost of local inspection. We will identify burdens on local areas where the cost outweighs the benefit, and remove these in time for the 2011-12 financial year. In preparation for the next spending review, we plan to radically reduce the number of targets. If we set in place strong rights to high standards and free up the front line to innovate in a more flexible way, then I believe that we can cut back on the overhead costs at the centre. We are already on track to deliver £30 billion of savings between 2008 and 2011. Today, though, I am setting out steps to save £12 billion, and in the Pre-Budget Report we will set out further tough choices towards halving the deficit. First, we will reduce the costs of the senior Civil Service. I am announcing today that we will reduce senior Civil Service costs by 20 per cent by 2012-13, and that we will seek to move 10 per cent of civil servants’ posts currently in London and the south-east to other parts of the country in the medium term. Secondly, I can tell the House today that Bill Cockburn, chair of the Senior Salaries Review Body, will review senior pay across the whole of the public sector, reporting to the Government in time for next year’s Budget. In the mean time, I will personally review all proposals of salary offers of over £150,000 set by the Government. Thirdly, we are publishing today plans drawn up by every Secretary of State to increase administrative efficiency for which they are accountable in back-office operations, including human resources, IT, collaborative procurement and asset management. I am also today publishing benchmarking information for all central government departments and government agencies showing exactly where we will focus to deliver these gains. I am also today setting a goal of saving £1.3 billion by putting services online, halving the consultancy bill and reducing marketing spend by one-quarter. Fourthly, I am announcing today the first results of a comprehensive review of arm’s-length bodies, to report by Budget 2010. I am announcing today that we will save £500 million a year from changes introduced by the review. I am able to tell the House today that as an interim step, subject to the necessary consultation and legislation, we will abolish or rationalise 123 arm’s-length bodies. Finally, I believe that, as part of this new future, the Government must either sell or transfer to better owners the things that they no longer need to own. I am therefore publishing today an asset portfolio listing the state-owned assets that the Government could commercialise over the medium term. This includes options for the future sale of the Tote, the student loan book, the Dartford crossing and the High Speed 1 rail link, and for potential alternative forms of ownership for British Waterways agreed by myself and the Secretary of State for Defra. Our policy will also include a new approach for testing where publicly owned assets should be transferred for use by the third sector. This Government believe that this country is both richer and fairer for the strength of our public services. We will never compromise on high standards, but we will never compromise either in our search for value for money. Today’s command paper sets a new path for the future that draws on the strengths created over a decade’s work, and I commend it to the House". My Lords, that concludes the Statement.