CBI to warn Brown over ‘snail’s pace’ public sector reform
The Government is expected to come under hostile fire from employers’ body the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) this evening over what it describes as the crushingly slow roll out of reforms to the public sector.
The CBI will challenge the Government and public sector trade unions to radically modify ‘ snail’s pace’ reforms, which were pledged to go hand-in-hand with extra spending commitments announced by the Treasury last year.
At the CBI’s annual dinner in London, with Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown guest of honour and among the 1,300 business leaders and politicians likely to show, president Sir John Egan will attack what he claims to be the endemic political dogmatism pervading trade unions, which has paralysed fundamental reform of key services.
Sir John will say: ‘From transport to health services and local government, we are not getting bang for our hard-earned bucks. There is little change on the ground.’
Furthermore, the CBI will question where taxpayers’ money was spent over the last year. It is likely to berate the Government for raising administration costs (19.8bn pounds) without a corresponding improvement in front-line services.
The CBI boss will highlight the fact that public sector output increased by only two per cent over the last year despite spending rising by seven per cent.
Sir John will say: ‘Public institutions are hamstrung by organisational inability to spend effectively, most strikingly on transport. Worse, the debate on using the private sector is bogged down in an internal family row in the labour movement – even minor changes get branded as sinister privatisation plots.’
Calling on union bosses to work in partnership to deliver real reform of services, he will say: ‘Union leaders may have appointed themselves the champions of the public services but it is not helpful for them to suggest that services to the tax-paying consumer are only safe with them. The refusal of some unions to accept change and support reform will not protect the services they claim to cherish, but contribute directly to their decline.
‘They should share our interest – to create world class services providing real value to the tax payers who fund them. They should not defend work practices and structures that have clearly failed.’
