Prospect has a good piece by David Halpern this month, urging the Government to begin the painful but absolutely unavoidable process of cutting public expenditure....see here.
"...we must overcome our longstanding lack of interest in evaluating what works: the quiet scandal of public policy where billions are spent but not unspent if they don’t deliver. One hard lesson from history is that reviews focusing just on efficiency gains don’t deliver what’s needed when your budget deficit is heading towards 10 per cent. The Canadians introduced 15 initiatives to control or reduce expenditure in the 1980s and early 1990s, but their debt still tripled. If we aren’t careful, we are in danger of following them."
David Halpern is director of research at the Institute for Government and was a chief analyst in the Downing Street strategy unit.
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