A report from think tank Reform says the public have a feeling that the State simply isn’t working. While that view might be overstating the case a bit, public procurement certainly isn’t working as it should, as Reform’s report An efficiency mindset: prioritising efficiency in Whitehall’s everyday work, convincingly argues.
The report is based on interviews with former Cabinet ministers and permanent secretaries, current and former chairs of spending watchdogs and academics. They told Reform that Whitehall efficiency drives tend to take place in the run-up to fiscal events like budgets and were “frantic and tactical”. In that environment spending decisions have no chance of taking proper account of crucial information regarding the efficiency and deliverability of policies.
The report says it found evidence that people running projects, including the senior civil servants overseeing the delivery of projects, can find it hard to get an accurate picture of progress. So civil servants are unable to track the performance of critical projects properly and public sector spending is often not properly aligned with government and departmental priorities. A long series of independent as well as government reviews had found a failure to foster continuous efficiency in the civil service, yet little changes.
One interviewee told Reform about a government department that sought Treasury sign-off for a multibillion-pound programme despite evidence that its delivery was not feasible. The incentive to pursue a larger budget outweighed the disincentive of potential delivery failure, it is said. They heard other evidence that once the Treasury signs off a policy or programme they did not see it as their role to check whether programmes were delivered.
The last multi-year spending review in 2021 carried a commitment to link spending bids with evidence that funding would help secure departments’ priorities, but evidence suggested that the process is “no more than a box-ticking exercise” and some departments had not published updated the annual “outcome delivery plans” that are crucial for assessing delivery in either of the last two years.
Government refuses to publicly release these plans which is said to hamper the ability of parliament and public to scrutinise departments’ plans and progress. Reform says the plans should be put on a statutory footing and parliamentary select committees should be empowered to hold annual scrutiny hearings to examine progress.
Reform advises that every department should appoint a named individual in their executive team to oversee performance information, and the Cabinet Office should create a cross-Whitehall task force to set and monitor metrics for measuring progress of projects and policies. Evaluation should be ‘hard-wired’ into all stages of policy development and evaluations should be published to ensure that robust evidence on the effectiveness of policies informs spending decisions.
The paper proposes a framework for more efficient spending that would better match resources to priority outcomes; embed evaluation early on in policymaking; and make better use of performance information. Reform also sets out ideas to strengthen the incentives that civil servants have to pursue efficiency, and improve how senior officials are held accountable for the results of spending.
All of which are sound recommendations; but even if adopted it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that reforms would be simply absorbed by the Whitehall sponge as have all the other attempts at procurement reform made over many years.
Nick Barrett
Editor