We forever read about UK taxes already being high whilst many public services are struggling – and politicians of all colours outbidding each other with promises of more funding for more inputs – and many existing workforces threaten strikes for more inflation-beating pay, funded by the famous magic-money-tree
What we never read about, at least not until freelance journalist Roland White wrote in the Thunderer column of The Times, are the billions of pounds being lost due to Government waste and inefficiency – he recalled that Sir John Bourn, when Comptroller and Auditor General, uncovered many alarming examples, including:
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- £6bn losses in MoD stores
- £5bn per annum losses due to housing benefit fraud
- One police force held a prisoner in custody overnight for £89, another force cost over £2,000
As our readers well know, we’ve been banging on for years about the futility of pouring more and more tax-payers’ money into the public sector without any measures of the waste and inefficiency therein
To quote Sir Jim Ratcliffe, billionaire founder and boss of Ineos: “The UK should focus on running essential services well – you’ve got healthcare, policing, education and energy – all four are a mess compared to America, Switzerland, Germany or France – there’s no excuse for it – they just need to be managed competently”
Imagine if we knew that `30% or more of all public sector funding was being wasted – some £300bn wasted each and every year by the UK alone – either because assets were not used, work done was unnecessary or methods used were out-of-date and inefficient – and that was before considering any major new investment to employ new technology, say
Sadly, nobody has such data – nobody measures such things, so nothing changes and the sector continues to gobble up more and more tax-payers’ funds whilst struggling more and more to provide the services needed
White rightly calls for an Independent Commission, headed by somebody with a high profile and a robust personality, to delve into such matters on a regular basis
But he then nominates George Osborne for the job which would bring politics back into it and thus may well scupper any chance of success