By Mark Smulian
9 June 2010
Winning public consent for tough spending cuts will be helped by openness from all tiers of government, the CIPFA conference heard today.
Jessica Crowe, executive director of the Centre for Public Scrutiny, and Matthew Elliott, director of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, both told delegates that transparency and the search for efficient spending was not a Left-Right political issue but essential to providing good value for money.
Elliott said the publication last week of the Combined Online Information System, known as the Coins database, should lead to ‘armchair accountants’ seeking out waste once the information in the database became easier to use. These would act as a check on the use of public finances. (See ‘Treasury publishes public spending database’)
‘Freedom of data is the logical consequence of freedom of information,‘ he said.
Publishing the details of all government contracts should lead to businesses examining deals done by their competitors, Elliott said. ‘There will be people going to government saying: “I can give you better value”,’ he predicted.
He argued that greater transparency would help to win public confidence in the government’s approach to public spending. This was essential because the cuts would be far in excess of those discussed by any party in the general election campaign.
‘There was not a real debate before the election, and people will be wondering whether they really voted for this,’ he added.
Crowe argued that involving the public in spending decisions would help to restore public confidence in central and local government. But this would also depend on how honest public bodies were with citizens and how they behaved when errors came to light.
‘It is important that people are not just involved but have influence,’ she said. ’Turkeys are involved in Christmas but they don’t have a lot of influence over the results.’
Crowe added that better scrutiny could lead to better government because it could help to unearth both good and bad practice.
‘If people cannot justify their decision to public scrutineers, you have to ask whether their decisions are the right ones,’ she said.
