29 June 2007
Whitehall and wider public sector reorganisation and mergers must be based on clear rationales and not political expediency, public sector leaders have warned.
'The government must make sure the need for any new body is well founded and not just based on short-term headlines,' Sir Philip Hampton, author of the Treasury's 2005 Hampton review on regulation told a National Audit Office conference on public sector mergers on June 25.
Hampton's comments follow widespread speculation that new Prime Minister Gordon Brown might embark on a radical shake-up of Whitehall – including the reorganisation of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is expected to absorb the Department of Trade and Industry's energy remit.
But Anna Walker, chief executive of the Healthcare Commission and a former director-general for energy at the DTI, added her own warning about poorly thought-out mergers.
Walker became responsible for energy at the DTI in 1998, when the new Labour government first transferred the portfolio from the old energy department. She said: 'We had no common agenda or understanding within the DTI of how the energy agenda, or what we were doing, fitted in with the department's wider agenda. Our objectives and how they fitted in had not been discussed.'
Walker went on to note that the forthcoming merger of her own commission with the Commission for Social Care Inspection could also be problematic, as the government had yet to publish a cost-benefit analysis of the change.
PFjun2007
