This appears to be the mantra of this Election. Surely, no one can disagree with the imperative of cutting waste - unless, perhaps you take the Keynesian view that it is better to pay a man (or woman) to dig a hole in the road and fill it in again than for them to languish in idleness.
You could say 'cutting waste' is a subject close to my heart, being that it has been a major part of my job for twenty years. Obviously, I am not going to talk directly about the specifics of my job or how my employer arranges things.
Whoever is charged with making economies must understand what waste is, what they are doing and what its consequences are. I shall follow with a few illustrations which spell caution!
Every year, there is a series of questions in Parliament asking how much has been spent on taxis, which is followed by an outcry in the tabloids as it is revealed that Civil Servants spend several millions on taxis*. Throughout twenty years with several employers in the public and private sector, I have often used taxis for the final leg of a journey otherwise travelled by train. I travelled many times to Llandrindod Wells as a passenger, either in someone's private car or in a hire car, and, of course, I never claimed anything for doing so. On other occasions I have travelled by train to rural town councils and ports which are 2 - 10 miles from the nearest station and have finished off the journey by car. If there was a blanket ban on public servants using taxis, there would be a rise in the cost of private and hire cars; often, taxi and train (especially a cheap advance ticket) is cheaper than hire car (or allows there and back in one day, thus saving on a hotel bill.
It seems to make sense that if you want to make savings, you cut 'unnecessary' admin jobs rather than direct front line service providers. It depends to some extent what you call admin: as I quipped on Twitter, I have seen NHS positions such as hospital porters and 999 call-takers described as 'admin', and even in some instances occupational therapists, physiotherapists and phlebotomists.
Even without this silliness, it's still important to understand what the admin person does. Many years ago I was on a Social Services Appeal Panel. One of the witnesses observed that some time before that, a round of spending cuts had led to all the filing clerks being made redundant with the expectation that social worker do their own, despite costing two or three times more and already snowed under with caseload. The result - many 'Serious Case Reviews' highlight the poor quality of record-keeping.
Other frontline public services are attacked because expensive highly trained professionals are forced to do paperwork rather than being out at the chalkface doing what they do. Ironically, of course, when steps are taken to bring in cheaper admin staff to take over some duties, that also gets attacked as a watering down of public services.
Incidentally, many years ago I was in the pub with someone who I think was then the chair of Lambeth School Governors. He was of the opinion that the fixation on class-sizes might prove an irrelevance - that it was far more important to maintain a high ratio between trained adults and children. I understand that nowadays many classrooms have several adults in them, not just the class teacher but assistants for various SEN children, and assistants to prepare materials and support the teacher.
Another thing to be cautious of when 'cutting waste' is to be aware that all accounting is double-entry. I saw something recently, and I can't for the life of me think what and if it was at work I wouldn't tell you anyway, but it referred to a saving made in a fee to another branch of Government. Indeed, if savings are to be made by abandoning or not-renewing contracts with private sector suppliers, or by re-negotiating more stringent terms, it isn't a pure economic win. Nor is making staff redundant (or ceasing to recruit). It will look good in the books of the individual body that does it, and monitoring and controlling public expenditure would be impossible if there weren't sub-divisions created for convenience. Every saving made, unless it is reinvested directly into services, means that someone loses their job or stays unemployed, collecting benefits and not buying goods and services or paying taxes. It might mean a supplier going bust: it's good practice not to place a contract if it would make up more than 25% of the contractor's turnover. But it wouldn't entirely surprise me if, now, there are firms entirely dependent upon contracts from just two or three government departments.
I think Inspectorate and Audit, like every other function needs to be reviewed from time to time, with a few basic questions: Does it do what it's supposed to do (outcomes, not inputs)? Do we want it to do this? Is there another (better or cheaper) way to achieve the same outcome? Are there perverse or unintended consequences that negate the (assumed) benefits? The trend in local government is to adopt a shared service approach, and I have to admit to being shocked that it has taken small district councils in particular so long to do so. It is self-evident that there are savings to be made in Shared Services; there are also dangers that they can become big self-perpetuating bureaucracies in themselves. Ironically, the early years of my career witnessed the disbanding of Property Services Agency; I am sure there used to be a Government Department devoted to buying supplies for other government departments, which, I guess, aimed to achieve economies of scale but eventually imploded.
But Inspectorates are just too easy a target. I am sure people could write whole Ph.D theories on the danger of managing solely to meet targets and ignoring that which isn't scrutinised. At their best, Inspectorates act as a conduit of Best Practice and enable organisations to be transparent. Where organisations are failing to serve their public, the Inspectorate regime exposes this; failure to improve has further consequences, rather than a laissez-faire which allows inadequate councils, prisons, schools and other public sector organisations to bumble along in incompetency and failure.
So, all I'm saying, if someone knocks on your door promising to cut waste, ask them what they mean by this. Hope that the journalists will ask the politicians the same question. Try and work out if the politicians even understand what they are talking about, or are they just promising this because they know that every reasonable and intelligent person abhors waste.
* Like the recent outcry in the tabloids at the news that council employees use corporate credit cards in toy shops - it's not like any council has any responsibility for looking after or educating children, is it!
