Yesterday (29 March) I gave evidence to the Treasury Select Committee on this year’s Budget. I concentrated on the so-called ‘efficiency’ savings. One of the things I pointed out was the frankly fantastic projections for savings in the Health service – something which strangely no-one seems to have noticed.

The Government is pledged to make “efficiency savings” (I use the word “efficiency” very loosely) of £4.36bn per year by 2012/13. That is challenging enough – it’s roughly 4-5% of the NHS budget.

But what seems to have escaped everyone’s attention is the pledge to make savings of “£15-£20bn” per year by 2013/14. (Budget section 6.14) In other words to treble or quadruple the “efficiency” savings in only a year to around 15-20% of the NHS budget. Continue reading “NHS Efficiency: who’s kidding who?” →

According to the supercomputer Deep Thought the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything was 42 (in Douglas Adam’s Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy).

It turns out however that this number may be subject to localised quantum relativity effects – specifically on an insignificant island off the north-west coast of Europe, a continent on a small blue planet in an unfashionable part of the galaxy. Here, the number is 43, rounded up – well actually 42.51, but it keeps wobbling around all the time and is subject to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. So usually, most of the time, its sort of around 43. Ish. Continue reading “The Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything? It’s 43.” →

I thought I’d share this interesting message from David Halpern, Research Director, Institute for Government London:

NEW BOOK: HIDDEN WEALTH OF NATIONS

DAVID WRITES: As you may know, since leaving No10 and Cabinet Office, I’ve spent some time revisiting the last 25 years of data on value change, the social and economic challenges (and opportunities) we face, and thinking about the policy implications. The results are published in The Hidden Wealth of Nations, out in the beginning of December. Continue reading “Hidden Wealth of Nations” →

My new book on ‘Theories of Performance’, which has come out of my ESRC Public Services Programme Fellowship – is more or less finished, bar some minor edits. I’ve added a new page (ToP Book – see tab above right) which has the contents, a description and some comments from colleagues who have read the draft, for those of you who might be interested.

A very well-balanced and interesting BBC programme and article by journalist Michael Blastland on the UK experience with performance targets, especially in the NHS. Well worth a read/listen.