Government Running Costs

Part of Opposition Day – in the House of Commons at 7:16 pm on 18 January 2000.

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Photo of Andrew Lansley Andrew Lansley Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office and Policy Renewal 7:16, 18 January 2000

Welfare spending needs to get away from the Government's approach of spending more while failing to reduce welfare budgets, and to get away from the means-testing proposals. We need a genuine reform of welfare spending that will enable more resources to be delivered to front-line public services. That is what the public are looking for.

However, as I said, that is not the whole story. Where else is the money going? It is going into the cost of running central Government itself. Whitehall saw Labour coming, and big government is back. The figures are startling. The Conservatives cut the number of civil servants by nearly a third. Since the election, that reduction has virtually stopped.

The last Conservative Government introduced management information systems, tough running cost limits and measures to relate activity and outputs to resources and their deployment. By comparison, under Labour, we have the much vaunted public service agreements, which are geared less to the value for money of spending and more to Treasury micro-management of public services according to Labour's political objectives—even extending to setting the priorities of local government.

The last Conservative Government had a grip on the cost of administering central Government itself. That is something that the public have a right to expect. At the last election, I met plenty of voters who wanted to see more resources for health, education and the police. However, I met none who wanted to see the Government spend more on administration.