Boris right to take on the problem of huge public waste
WAILING about “Tory cuts” has been the favourite soundtrack of the Left over the past decade. According to critics, Britain has endured an era of savage austerity, with the public sector pared back to the bone.
But this bleak narrative is wildly exaggerated. The reality is that state expenditure is at a record high, reaching a colossal £841billion this financial year, the equivalent of £29,000 for every household in the country. Contrary to all the fashionable moans, funding for vital areas such as the NHS, schools and pensions has increased significantly in recent years.
But the sheer scale of the resources devoted to the state allows tremendous scope for profligacy and inefficiency. Given the huge size of the Government’s budget, it is absurd to pretend that there is no room for savings.That is why the Prime Minister was so right this week to demand that his ministers “root out waste” across their departments.
Labour and the Left will inevitably portray this move as the return of the mad Conservative axe-wielders, bent on further ideological destruction of the state. But that would be the opposite of the truth.
JOHNSON is a liberalminded, pragmatic Tory who has little time for small-Government, free-market dogma. His aim is not to slash front-line services like the police, education and the NHS but to enhance them with cash saved from elsewhere by tackling the bureaucratic leviathan of the Government machine.
A host of obvious targets present themselves, such as the overpriced HS2 rail link, the costs of which continue to spiral wildly out of control. Last weekend Lord Berkeley, the deputy chair of the panel reviewing the project, warned that the budget could reach an unbelievable £108billion, up from the estimated price in 2015 of £55billion. If it is to proceed, the Government must bring these ludicrously inflated costs under control.
The Ministry of Defence’s procurement budget is a byword for extravagance and abuse. One expert recently estimated that over the past 15 years, the MOD has spent £280billion on ill-judged equipment. None of its decisions have been more misguided then the recent construction of two vast aircraft carriers at a cost of £6.2billion. Described by the former defence chief Sir David Richards as a pair “unaffordable, vulnerable tin cans”, these vessels detract from our maritime defence because they need much of the Royal Navy’s surface fleet to protect them.
It is a similar story elsewhere. Why is Britain doling out £151million in foreign aid to China and India, two rich countries with their own nuclear weapons and space programmes? The £1.8billion legal aid budget also needs wholesale reform, as shown by the revelation that £350,000 was given in support to the London bridge terrorist Usman Khan.
Meanwhile, the culture of welfare dependency continues to be reinforced by the £23.4billion spent annually on housing benefit and the £25billion on tax credits.
Despite all the bleating from the Left about “cuts”, there is still far too much bureaucracy, mismanagement and low productivity in much of the public sector. Rates of sickness, for instance, are significantly higher for public employees compared with their private counterparts, despite better pay, shorter hours, longer holidays and bigger pensions. The absence of competition often leads to a lack of dynamism among officialdom. Only last January the National Audit Office, the independent financial watchdog, declared the number of public bodies failing to provide value for money “unacceptably high”.
YET such failures have not stopped the grasping culture of self-interest among some top bureaucrats. This week it was revealed that no fewer than 350 public health officials were paid more than £100,000 last year, with the top 10 earning an average of £242,650. In the same vein, 2,500 municipal bosses had packages worth more than £100,000, with 28 of them on over £250,000, while average pay for university top staff rose to £253,000 a year.
This gravy train has to be halted. The moment is right for the reform of officialdom, now that Brexit is about to refashion our political system. This must mean real, radical change and innovation rather than the kind of expensive organisational tinkering in which Whitehall usually indulges to give the illusion of progress. Boris Johnson has so far proved a bold leader. If he is to achieve real savings, he has to continue in that spirit.
‘There is still too much bureaucracy, mismanagement, low productivity’