09 July 2004
The National Audit Office looks set to be the body to assess whether the planned multi-billion pound savings widely expected to be outlined in the imminent Gershon report are actually being achieved.
This week, the Office of Government Commerce wrote to the NAO asking it to help once the report is published.
John Oughton, chief executive at the OGC, the Treasury body that looks into central government procurement efficiency, made the request on July 5. The early indications are that the NAO is keen to comply.
Sir Peter Gershon's findings, which are likely to be published in the coming week on the back of the chancellor's Spending Review, have long been predicted to recommend annual savings of £20bn across Whitehall.
Gershon, the former chief executive at the electronics group Marconi, could also recommend as many as 80,000 job cuts across government. A number of back-office positions, in areas such as finance and human resources, could be lost or merged.
Speaking to Public Finance after appearing in front of the Commons' Public Accounts Commission on July 7, Sir John Bourn, the NAO's comptroller and auditor general, said the details of how his organisation would work with the OGC were still to be finalised.
'This would be a special exercise the terms of which we would work out with the OGC so our skills and expertise are used,' he said.
Earlier, Bourn had told the commission that he would be willing to carry out the work as 'long as my impartiality is ensured'.
News that the savings drive could be subject to independent analysis came just hours after the Conservatives launched their own proposals for pruning back Whitehall.
Claiming that the civil service was now equivalent to the population of Sheffield and costing every household £850 a year, Shadow Chancellor Oliver Letwin pledged that any future Tory government would cut back on central government costs as well.
He said: 'We can radically reduce… the cost of government without taking a single penny away from front-line services.'
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