30 January 2009
By Alex Klaushofer
The role of finance director could become the second most powerful position in Whitehall under a Conservative government, it emerged this week.
Launching a series of proposals aimed at improving financial responsibility in central government, the Tories pledged to redefine the role of finance director with a new career path and pay scale. It also recommended a dual reporting line to both a departmental head and a central financial management organisation.
In a consultation document entitled It's your money, the party recommended that a new obligation to manage public spending should be written into senior mandarins' contracts. It added that pay and promotion for all civil servants should be tied to their performance against new financial performance measures.
Shadow chancellor George Osborne told the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales: 'From the conversations I've had, it's obvious that no-one is more frustrated at the failure to spend money wisely than the professionals in our public services and our civil servants in Whitehall.
'What is needed is a new approach – a new culture of financial discipline across government,' he added.
Citing a 2008 report by the National Audit Office – which found that six government departments lacked a board-level finance director – he criticised the government for undervaluing the 'crucial' role.
Responding to the proposals, the senior civil servants' union, the FDA, said that responsibility for financial discipline should apply to ministers as well as senior civil servants.
General secretary Jonathan Baume said: 'Taxpayers have a right to feel confident that their money is being spent wisely. The single most important way of achieving this goal would be to improve the quality of political decision-making.
'All too often, the government is trying to do too much, spreading its resources too thinly and, as a consequence, limiting its effectiveness.'
A spokesman for the Public and Commercial Services union said that different pay systems and performance measures already in place had led to pay inequalities.
'It would be interesting to see how the Conservatives propose to actually introduce these performance measures. Since the Conservatives introduced delegated pay bargaining when they were last in power, civil service pay has become increasingly fragmented,' he said.
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