I am delighted that The Spectator is launching a campaign to highlight the grotesque levels of financial waste in government. Of course public sectors worldwide have always defaulted towards profligacy – but we are in different territory now.
Our GDP per capita is declining: through immigration, the population is growing faster than the real economy is growing. We have no more capacity to borrow – we are already paying 25 per cent more than the Italian government for ten-year debt. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves love to talk bullishly about growth, but they don’t understand that taxing the productive sector more and more and discouraging employment through onerous new regulations will stifle the economy.
That leaves public waste – £200 billion of unproductive spending. Britain’s wealth is leaking away as we borrow yet more money to then waste it.
In 2020 I was given the Pythonesque title of ‘minister for efficiency and transformation’. It was like turning up to a blazing building with a seaside bucket. On my first day in office, I met the then Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. He told me that his most difficult problem was finding me an office. (He never did.) That set the tone of the Treasury’s approach to confronting waste.
I did manage to cancel 33 government property leases in London, which saved about £1 billion (only £199 billion to go!). But the biggest termination of all, signed and sealed by two cabinet ministers and myself, was overturned after I left (102 Petty France, overlooking St James’s Park). Why? Simply because the civil servants didn’t want to lose the lovely view.
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