Choice conflicts with Gershon

14 Jul 05
Government programmes to seek choice and efficiency in public services conflict with each other, former mandarin Sir Michael Bichard has warned.

15 July 2005

Government programmes to seek choice and efficiency in public services conflict with each other, former mandarin Sir Michael Bichard has warned.

Delivering the Audit Commission's inaugural annual lecture on July 13, Bichard, a former permanent secretary at the Department for Education and Employment, said: 'If you build capacity you must to some extent be in conflict with achieving Gershon efficiencies.

'Choice of provider requires some slack for its very existence.'

Serious questions needed to be asked about whether resources should be used to improve services rather than create this spare capacity, he said.

In a wide-ranging questioning of public service reform programmes, he said faults in public services did not lie with staff because 'the tragedy is that too many of them have struggled as a result of bad systems and poor leadership'.

The civil service 'could be a source of creativity and energy to the benefit of the nation,' he said. 'It could be the powerhouse of reform, but it is not.'

PFjul2005

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