The Better Government Initiative, a "grouping of top civil servants, ambassadors and former local government chief executives" with no relation to our own campaign, are set to report today. The Financial Times describes how they will argue that:
"Gordon Brown's proposals for revamping the way Britain is governed address neither the issue of "sofa government", nor the erosion of both cabinet responsibility and parliament's ability effectively to scrutinise the executive."
These problems are described as contributing to the number of "failed and flawed" initiatives in recent years. Their report will be released later today but at this stage it looks like they have confined themselves to too narrow a remit to address the root causes of public service failure and the resulting collapse in trust in politics.
The recommendations mentioned so far, parliament setting standards for the preparation of legislation, select committee members and chairmen being paid and select committee appointments being brought under the control of MPs, are pretty minor adjustments. With administrative chaos and endemic failures in the public services more serious reform to end attempts by ministers without management experience to manage public services from the centre is needed.