The paradox of liberty: we should freely
choose to help one another.

Via HMT – Spending Challenge, an attempt to “crowd source” government spending:

The Spending Challenge is your chance to help shape the way government works. We need to reduce the deficit by cutting public spending in a way that is fair and responsible – and you can help.

It could be something small that is quick and easy to put into action, or a more radical change to where and how government works.  Either way, please be as specific as you can.

If you see ideas here already that you like the look of, then rate them and get them moved up the list. And if there’s more you’d like to say, then talk to others in the comments section.

A team has been put together right at the heart of government and their job is to make sure that your ideas and comments are taken seriously – and that the best ideas are taken forward as part of the Spending Review.

The Spending Review will set out four year spending plans for all government departments, as well as considering other areas of spending including welfare. The conclusions of the Spending Review will be published on 20 October 2010.

At a glance, there are some great ideas – scrapping HS2 and not wasting money at the end of the financial year, for example – and some awful or ridiculous ones.

You can play your part, for better or worse, here.

Via ConservativeHome:

More.

The latest publication from the Centre for Policy Studies arrived today: “Freedom for Public Services” by William Mason and Jonathan McMahon. Better services at lower cost, and more fulfilling jobs for public servants, are quite possible.

As ever, this CPS report is intelligent, brief, clear and insightful. The sheer scale of central regulation is shocking even as one who has begun to study the situation. Consider for example the list of regulators for the NHS:

• The Healthcare Commission
• Strategic Health Authorities
• Monitor
• The General Dental Council
• Payment by Results (The Audit Commission)
• The National Patient Safety Agency
• The National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Programme
• The Commission for Social Care Inspection
• The Mental Health Act Commission
• The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence
• The Health and Safety Executive
• The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency
• The Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts, part of the NHS Litigation Authority
• The National Commissioning Group
• and the Department of Health itself

Furthermore, healthcare professionals are individually regulated by, variously, medical schools, Royal Colleges, the Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board, the General Medical Council and other professional organisations.

As you would expect, the paper makes a number of practical recommendations for simplification, efficiency and greater accountability in health and in the other public services, including the police, local government, schools and higher education. One summary point is particularly telling:

Central control is not working. Leading politicians of both main parties recognise that public services in the UK today are too large and complex for effective central management. In particular, David Cameron’s advocacy of the post-bureaucratic age is based on the premise that freedom of information can “make possible a new world of responsibility, citizenship, choice and local control.”

I recommend the report.

Poverty in Britain remains horrifying. For example, about 7% of households cannot afford a single hobby or leisure activity and a quarter cannot manage to save £10 a month for rainy days or retirement.

Bleak.

But the DWP plans to spend just over £130 billion in 2008. Surely some mistake, so I did a quick calculation based on 2007 numbers:

Now, as a first estimate, it appears that DWP manages to spend almost twice as much as the poverty threshold for every person in poverty. This is optimistic too: I used the threshold figure for a single person with no children. If we took the figure of £260 per week for a couple with two children, and divided by four, it would appear DWP spends about three times the threshold per head.

These are devastating ratios, but worse, it is not working:

Using a still lower threshold of 40% of median income, however, the pattern is rather different: unchanged levels throughout the last decade. In other words, there has been no reduction in the numbers of very poor people.

Sustained misery, maintained at vast expense, is a tragedy.

Thank goodness, then, for Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice and for Chris Grayling. We are getting there.

A pity millions of people must wait for significant change to begin.

Corporate tax for small firms could apparently be reduced by 4% if “failed” RDAs were abolished.

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