David Cameron has infuriated senior civil servants with a public attack on the “enemies of enterprise” in Whitehall, with mandarins accusing the prime minister of unfairly criticising officials who are not allowed to answer back.
As the report makes clear: that's the polite way of putting it.
The impression given that being a prime minister requires no prior work experience grows by the day.
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Actually Cameron is in good company because Blair also criticised civil servants and I seem to remember that he had been a less than successful barrister. Why Cameron is not being challenged by opposition politicians is beyond me. On second thoughts I do know why, because their ‘business’ experience is no better.
I don’t think that Cameron was referring to all civil servants, but he has a point in as much as there are many in the public sector (and I work with a lot of them) to whom the words “profit” and “limited company” are anathematic, who would never work in the private sector and who seem to believe that the entire economy could run on public sector employment.
Having recently had a meeting with someone who looked at efficiency savings potential in various public sector departments, I have to say I was shocked. Some of the issues are just pure waste, others are poor managment and also a lack of incentives to change. In most cases that they looked at, it would be possible for 30-70% cost savings to be made even allowing for an outsourced supplier to make a profit margin. I can’t believe that there is no overall government travel policy that allows its buying power to negotiate discounts, nor restricts what class is used or what hotel stayed at. Or that management is incentivised to spend all their budget and keep as many staff as possible as that determines their importance. And when asked how much they could save in costs and staff if they were given a portion of the savings, well suddenly there was 20/30% potential cost savings without affecting service quality. So I am not surprised people don’t like being told they haven’t being doing their job properly.
@PaulF
And quite candidly – I think that’s utter BS
Or worse
I simply don’t believe you
If it were true then successive drives to make savings would have worked
I suggest you go back into your fantasy world
I am afraid what PaulF says is quite true. Having worked in the private sector for 15 years and the central government and agencies for another 12, the big difference is that the private sector knows it has to constantly review the way it does things to remain competitive, whereas government departments know that they only have a problem when the politicians cut their funding. As a result there are plenty of processes in gthe public sector that baffle me as to why they are still done the way that they are or even done at all.
Really Richard, you do need to look past your ideological viewpoint. Many private sector firms are full of waste when there is no incentive or drive to change it, that is why they have managed to save significant amounts by outsourcing. Look at the example of Aviva, which has reduced its UK cost base by 36% over 5 years, whilst growing customer numbers. Most insurance companies have massively improved efficiency, so it only stands to reason the same can be achieved in the UK largest insurer, the DWP. In fact, one of the insurance providers offered to help DWP clean their pension payment database for free, having found 3% payments to dead people in their own database, but DWP refused. Why, well the insurance provider is confused, but think it is because there is only a disincentive where DWP will have headlines that they haven’t been doing their job properly. Similarly, letting anyone buy whateveer office chair they like, or fly first class, or stay in whatever hotel they like exists in the public sector, and can be removed without a single job loss. But no incentive for departments to do this as it just reduces their budget and hence their fiefdom.
@PaulF
I’m not blinkered – I’ve worked in the private sector for a very long time
And I see as much hierarchy building and inefficiency there