see my latest post on Public Finance website

Efficiency Wars, by Colin Talbot‎ Public Finance The first Efficiency Wars occurred in 2004, in the run-up to the last General Election the following year. Labour’s Gershon £21.5bn was pitted against the …

It’s official – the Budget ‘red book’ contained a glaring error about NHS efficiency savings and thus the Chancellor (obviously inadvertently) misled Parliament. The Budget stated: “Budget 2010 confirms that the NHS will deliver annual efficiency savings of £15 to 20 billion by 2013-14.” (Para 6.14, page 90 – my emphasis).

The influential new book “Nudge” (Thaler and Sunstein 2008) comes from the emerging field of behavioral economics, which investigates the non-rational ways in which people make decisions. Its policy implications are radical – it advocates what the authors call “libertarian paternalism”. This paradoxical prescription is based on the idea of ‘choice architecture’ – the notion that the […]

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 […]

Society daily 25.03.2010‎ The Guardian What budget, asks Whitehall Watch’s Colin Talbot. “This must be the most non-budget in British history.” Certainly if you were expecting detail on …

This must be the most non-Budget in British history. No significant changes to taxation, or spending, over those already announced in the Pre Budget Report last autumn.

Following on from my ‘organisational amnesia’ post comes the National Audit Office’s report on reorganisations in British central Government. I have reproduced their ‘blurb’ below but since 1980 25 new government departments have been created, of which 13 no longer exist, compared to only 2 new ones in US federal government over the same period. […]