Conservatives to transfer management of government assets

27 Nov 09
Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Philip Hammond has said the Conservatives would transfer the management of the government’s property assets to a separate publicly owned company
By Jaimie Kaffash

27 November 2009

Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Philip Hammond has said the Conservatives  would transfer the management of the government’s property assets to a separate publicly owned company.

He made the announcement while detailing the Tories’ proposed efficiency savings, which he claimed could save the taxpayer £60bn. Announcing plans to transfer government assets to a private company, he said: ‘We will ensure that government departments have a clear incentive to use more efficiently the billions of pounds worth of property assets on central government's balance sheet. We will transfer the ownership of central government property into a publicly owned, professionally managed, asset company, which will charge departments rent for their use. So that if they reduce that use, they will make cash savings.’

He attacked Labour’s ‘efficiency agenda’, which had been a ‘burden’ imposed on departments and was seen not as a solution but ‘another box to be ticked’, he claimed. The Tories, without the ‘ideological baggage about the configuration  of public service delivery’, could bring about radical change.

Hammond added that the Conservatives would try to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of public sector managers. ‘Coercion is hard work and can only be maintained for a limited period of time,’ he said. ‘But win the hearts and minds and the dynamics change radically.

‘That is what we need to do with the managements of our public services.  To create a "demand pull" for efficiency solutions; a hunger for innovation; a desire to deliver productivity improvement.’

He said that public sector productivity under the Labour government shrank by 3.4% compared with a 30% rise in the private sector. He added that the Tories could save £60bn by ‘making up the lost ground of Labour’s lost decade without any impact on public service outcomes’.

Hammond also announced the establishment of a Shadow Public Services Productivity Advisory Board, which would continue work if the Conservatives formed the next government, and would be made up of private and public service leaders. 


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