289. Why we need fewer civil servants
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Why do we need fewer civil servants?
2010, we spent 3.6 billion a year on consultants. You know, people reading our watch, telling us the time. Civil service, Stephen, is like an infinite wall. Infinitely high, infinitely wide. Every 10 billion pound we save is half a million junior nurses salaries for you. is three million primary school places when you run in a business and the civil service is fundamentally a business needs to have a strategy a vision a plan and then you've got to execute the plan you want to have the best talent in the right swim lanes to deliver that what percentage of procurement that's government purchase of goods and services a went to British companies and B went to smaller companies and how did that change on your watch that's a great question so um
Government spends on public procurement 430 billion a year. 430 billion.
We're delighted to say that this year the rest of this money is powered by Octopus Energy. So we're joined by its founder and CEO, Greg Jackson.
How can the civil service be made more efficient?
So Greg, I heard that the prices of solar and home battery storage are falling. So is it worth waiting before you invest in them?
First of all, we never know what's going to happen to the future price of energy. It could go up or go down. So I think when people try to do a really detailed payback calculation, the problem is you don't really know what the alternative is. But I don't know many people who've regretted getting these technologies because the one thing, whenever you get them, is it helps insulate against the volatility of the market prices. And so as far as I can tell, the vast majority of people who've made that decision are happy with it.
Greg, thank you very much. Now on with today's episode.
Hello and welcome to The Rest Is Money with me, Steph McGovern.
I'm with me, Robert Peston. And what we want to find out today is, is there a way to make the civil service more efficient, cut civil service numbers while simultaneously buying more from British companies, particularly small British companies that would have this virtuous effect of freeing up a ton of money for investment in public services, but also stimulate growth?
Yes, and we've got the perfect guest for this. We've got Stephen Kelly, who for many years has ran several big name tech and software companies, started his career at Oracle, went on to become the CEO of Sage Group, which is, of course, one of the largest software companies in the UK. And then he was brought into the public sector by David Cameron to improve efficiency, try and bring down the number of civil servants, cut the spending and essentially improve productivity in the civil service as well, which he managed. So we want to know how he did it. Here is our interview with Stephen Kelly. Stephen, lovely to have you on the show. Now, as we've just mentioned in the introduction, you were brought in by David Cameron to streamline the public sector.
What impact did Brexit and Covid have on civil service numbers?
What we want to know is we need that now. So how did you do it? What can we learn from you?
Yeah, and obviously very different times. That was back in 2010, so 16 years ago. And it was off the back of the credit crunch, 2008, and then a whole period of what was termed austerity. But with this, effectively, I think fundamentally the civil service can be massively improved and made a lot more efficient so that we deliver much better services to citizens. And that was the whole mission. So between George Osborne and Francis Morton, David Cameron, they determined that they should bring someone in probably from the private sector who's got a lot of operational experience and create a role called the first chief operating officer for the whole of the UK government, 24 departments. And that encompasses all things like IT, commercial practices, procurement, digital services.
So the launch of things like GovUK, as well as major projects. So all the fun and probably of connecting for health and HS2 and Hinkley Point and all these sort of things. So it's a very wide range and anything touching taxpayer money would be effectively the responsibility of this role, working very collaboratively with the departments.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why do we need fewer civil servants?
0:01–0:57
2
How can the civil service be made more efficient?
0:57–2:55
3
What impact did Brexit and Covid have on civil service numbers?
2:55–4:28
4
How can the government save £30 billion a year?
4:28–7:31
5
What strategies did Stephen Kelly implement for efficiency?
7:31–9:12
6
How did procurement practices change under Stephen Kelly?
9:12–10:49
7
What role did British SMEs play in government procurement?
10:49–12:28
8
What lessons can current leaders learn from past reforms?
12:28–45:02
Speakers
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