23 September 2005
The Scottish Executive's £1.2bn efficiency drive has been thrown into doubt by a senior economic specialist.
Professor Arthur Midwinter told the Scottish Parliament's finance committee this week that the Executive's measures held out no clear prospect of increased efficiency.
Midwinter said that both the finance committee and Audit Scotland had raised concerns about the quality of information, about financial data, the lack of output data, the need for baselines and the need for more transparency with regard to how the savings were being delivered.
He added: 'Unless we get the output data and baselines, this cannot possibly be an efficiency programme. It's simply an exercise in reallocating money.'
The Executive's efficient government plan, published in November last year, aims to make £745m of recurring savings by 2007/08. The Executive has defined the efficiency gains as getting more outputs – improved services for the same or smaller amounts of cash.
However, Midwinter pointed out that the technical notes on the efficient government plan did not contain baseline figures needed to measure how the savings were being made. He added: 'Without real output measures… from budget decisions, this initiative will remain a cost-cutting exercise, not an efficiency improvement one.'
In a report to the committee, Midwinter said there had been a lack of clarity around the issue of how efficiency savings would be reallocated.
A Scottish Executive spokeswoman denied that the savings were not being monitored. She said: 'What matters is that, collectively, money added to the Scottish budget and cash-releasing savings are redeployed according to ministerial priorities and, of course, that these resources are used efficiently.
PFsep2005
