So, it appears fairly certain now that the Coalition Government is going to announce – sometime next year – Spending Review 2013.

Here’s the summary of my contributions to yesterday’s discussion on the Guardian Public Leaders Network.

I understand something of the frustration and anger of the relatives of the Hillsborough victims because I had a similar experience – albeit on a much smaller scale. British officialdom has a cult of secrecy and cover-up that is still with us, even if is has gotten slightly better. In 1982 my younger brother Gary, […]

It is quite likely we are moving, hesitatingly and perhaps not in a straight line, towards an era of coalition governments in the UK.

[President Obama] “took office without the basic qualification that most Americans have, and one that was essential to the task at hand.  He had almost no experience working in a business.  Jobs to him are about government.” Mitt Romney in his acceptance speech. I was struck by this largely ignored passage in Mitt Romney’s acceptance […]

The Government’s decision to use an administrative sledgehammer to crack the nut of relatively minor possible abuses of Universities student visa’s is a disgrace.

We were told, when the new Coalition Government came to be, that it would put an end to “New Labour targetry”. The use of targets for public sector performance had become a bête noir of both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in Opposition and they apparently couldn’t wait to scrap the whole lot once they were in […]

Today’s highly dubious announcement of supposed ‘efficiency savings’ by the Government reinforces the need for independent Standards for reporting performance and efficiency in the public sector. Today I’ve published a ‘White Paper’ calling for changes to achieve that.

The government has claimed today to have made £5.5bn worth efficiency savings and that these have been “independently audited”. First, definitions. “Efficiency”, in this context, is usually defined as the relationship (ratio) between the cost of inputs and the amount and quality of outputs. So if, and only if, we have reliable data about both […]