By Vivienne Russell
10 December 2009
The most significant reform of Whitehall in over 50 years will help to generate savings of more than £1bn, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said.
A government report, Putting the front line first: smarter government, was launched on December 7 in advance of the Pre-Budget Report.
It set out how ministers intend to generate an extra £3bn in efficiency gains over and above the £9bn pledged in April’s Operational Efficiency Programme.
Almost half of this – £1.3bn – is to come from streamlining central government, specifically by cutting the senior civil service pay bill by 20%, freeing up £100m a year; abolishing or merging 123 quangos; and relocating more civil service staff out of London and the Southeast.
Brown said: ‘Our plans will mean some of the most sweeping changes in administration in this country in half a century.
‘In line with the way people carefully and wisely manage their household budgets, every penny spent by Whitehall must count.’
He said the ‘culture of excess’ in public sector pay rates must change. It was not right that 300 staff across the public sector earned more than £200,000, he said. In future, all public sector salaries of more than £150,000 would be subject to ministerial approval.
But the First Division Association union, which represents senior civil servants, branded the 20% pay bill cut as ‘irresponsible’, coming as it did less than six months before a general election.
General secretary Jonathan Baume said: ‘The new government [next year] needs first to explain how it intends to curtail the functions of central government. If it does so, then staffing levels are likely to fall as a consequence. But this announcement looks more like crude electioneering than a sober assessment of the implications for central government of the fiscal crisis.’
The Public and Commercial Services union was also sceptical. General secretary Mark Serwotka said: ‘Cutting arm’s-length bodies may sound all well and good, but let’s not forget that these are organisations that the government itself set up... The government has to ask itself what it is going to stop doing.’
The prime minister also said savings could be made by making the ‘great majority’ of transactions online only, freeing up £400m in the first instance, with further potential. He cited local authority evidence to show that transactions online could save £3.30 a time on telephone calls and £12 on paper and mail transactions.
The paper also said reducing centrally imposed targets and ring-fenced budgets would give frontline staff more autonomy.
10 December 2009
The most significant reform of Whitehall in over 50 years will help to generate savings of more than £1bn, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said.
A government report, Putting the front line first: smarter government, was launched on December 7 in advance of the Pre-Budget Report.
It set out how ministers intend to generate an extra £3bn in efficiency gains over and above the £9bn pledged in April’s Operational Efficiency Programme.
Almost half of this – £1.3bn – is to come from streamlining central government, specifically by cutting the senior civil service pay bill by 20%, freeing up £100m a year; abolishing or merging 123 quangos; and relocating more civil service staff out of London and the Southeast.
Brown said: ‘Our plans will mean some of the most sweeping changes in administration in this country in half a century.
‘In line with the way people carefully and wisely manage their household budgets, every penny spent by Whitehall must count.’
He said the ‘culture of excess’ in public sector pay rates must change. It was not right that 300 staff across the public sector earned more than £200,000, he said. In future, all public sector salaries of more than £150,000 would be subject to ministerial approval.
But the First Division Association union, which represents senior civil servants, branded the 20% pay bill cut as ‘irresponsible’, coming as it did less than six months before a general election.
General secretary Jonathan Baume said: ‘The new government [next year] needs first to explain how it intends to curtail the functions of central government. If it does so, then staffing levels are likely to fall as a consequence. But this announcement looks more like crude electioneering than a sober assessment of the implications for central government of the fiscal crisis.’
The Public and Commercial Services union was also sceptical. General secretary Mark Serwotka said: ‘Cutting arm’s-length bodies may sound all well and good, but let’s not forget that these are organisations that the government itself set up... The government has to ask itself what it is going to stop doing.’
The prime minister also said savings could be made by making the ‘great majority’ of transactions online only, freeing up £400m in the first instance, with further potential. He cited local authority evidence to show that transactions online could save £3.30 a time on telephone calls and £12 on paper and mail transactions.
The paper also said reducing centrally imposed targets and ring-fenced budgets would give frontline staff more autonomy.
