By Richard Johnstone | 14 May 2014
The government is only in the ‘foothills’ of reforms to integrate public spending across services in a bid to get ‘more for less’, policy minister Oliver Letwin has said.
Speaking at the Institute for Government last night on the future role of the state, Letwin also said many changes introduced by the coalition, such as more local control of planning, were intended to ‘go with the grain of human nature’.
He highlighted that government initiatives such as the Troubled Families programme – intended to turn round the lives of 120,000 people – and the proposed Better Care Fund were areas where the government was working to better integrate areas of spending.
The coalition was now examining how the benefits that result from better integration of spending would be shared.
‘The point of the Better Care Fund is to bring together health service provision and local authority provision to get to something that benefits the person but in addition benefits taxpayers in saving money,’ he said.
‘We are beginning down a journey, at the starting point of which lie many different areas where we’re trying that out.
‘We are in the foothills. We need to get to the point where we do this across the board – if there’s an advantage to the person and a saving to the taxpayer [of integration], then we all doing that. That is what I think we are learning to do.’
Letwin also praised the work of councils in increasing the use of shared services in response to funding restraints.
Under pressure from what he called very considerable expenditure constraints, local authorities have been ‘amazingly imaginative’ in finding new ways of getting more for less.
‘What has been happening in the last few years is that there has been a joining up of services,’ he added.
‘Local government has been one of the heroes of the last few years.’
