Richard Heller: Let the people say where the Chancellor's axe should fall

TODAY is the day of reckoning when the new Government has to leave the fantasy world of its coalition agreement and deal with the real economy.

Even assuming the fiercest conceivable tax increases, the Chancellor must cut public spending on a scale unknown in modern times.

Can we leave this task to politicians?

On past form, they will cut capital spending (the worst possible choice) because the resulting pain will be deferred. On current spending, they will almost certainly yield to special pleading by departments and interest groups. The result will be bad choices which ignore the real needs of the economy and divide the country between the lucky and the losers.

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Before this happens again, the new Government should turn to the real experts on where and how to cut public spending: Britain's public servants, Britain's businesses – and Britain's people. All three should be asked some simple, urgent questions.

It may seem paradoxical to ask public servants to identify targets for public spending cuts. Not so: right through the public sector, especially in frontline roles, there is a pent-up longing to reverse years of over-management, over-centralisation, over-interference.

So let us ask every doctor, nurse, teacher, police, prison or probation officer, every public servant who directly serves the public to tell us the most useless target they have been set, the most useless information they have to collect and supply, the most useless inspection they have to undergo, the most useless layer of management and bureaucracy they have to deal with. The replies would be illuminating. We should then abolish the top 10 choices in each category – without further questions.

All public servants should also be asked to rate any IT system they have to use. The 10 most hated should be abandoned: if this is impossible, their suppliers should receive no payments until they improve them enough to remove them from the list. Public servants should also be asked to rate all external consultancy projects they have encountered: reduce or cancel payments for the 10 least popular.

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External consultants should be paid on a contingency basis – a percentage of any measurable cost savings or efficiency gains they achieve. If that encourages departments to commission only projects with measurable benefits, so much the better.

Finally, all public servants should be required to define their role in 100 words or less. Those who reply in babble or buzzwords should be weeded out, those who answer meaningfully, retained. (The word "driving" is often a useful test. The public servant who describes himself as "driving transformational change in service delivery" is

expendable, the one who replies "driving a school bus" is essential).

The same questions about information, inspection, management and bureaucracy should be put to Britain's businesses. We could wipe out their top 10 choices as well – but subject to consultation and a veto from their workers and their customers, in case Britain's businesses sought to abolish essential safeguards.

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Prodigious sums are spent each year on agencies or initiatives intended to help business. So ask businesses whether they actually help, and then abolish the 10 judged least helpful and the 10 which are least known.

All these exercises would generate useful savings and raise the morale and productivity of public servants and businesses. But deeper cuts are required, and for these the Government should consult the real experts on public spending – the public themselves.

All citizens should be asked: what information do you most resent supplying to the Government? Then abolish the top choices. Information resented is not worth collecting at all – people give silly or false answers. As to unnecessary bureaucracy and management, people should be invited to name the biggest buckpassers they have encountered in the public sector – the officials or agencies who refer the greatest number of inquiries or complaints to someone else. Yet again, let's then target those with the highest scores.

The Government could simply ask the general public where they would like big cuts to fall, but there is a more creative alternative exercise. In opinion polls people regularly declare themselves willing to pay more tax to fund essential public services. Let's give them a chance to put their money where their mouth is. Invite everyone to contribute additional voluntary taxation to the Exchequer, in any amount, but also to name the intended public sector beneficiary.

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This exercise might raise a little extra money but more important, it would tell the Government which public services taxpayers really cared about. It might induce departments and agencies to plead directly to taxpayers for extra funding. Like charities, they would then be at pains to show that they do valuable work and waste no money, an excellent new discipline for the entire public sector.

In all of these ways, the British people could gain some kind of choice and control over the coming pain of public spending cuts. The alternative is to leave everything to the politicians who were so honest with us in the General Election campaign.

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