Cameron’s public sector ‘battering ram’
By politics.co.uk staff
David Cameron pledged to reform public services in as radical with a radical shift of power, as the campaign continues into its second weekend.
The Conservative leader told activists in Gloucester he would introduce a Public Sector Co-op Service which would work as a “battering ram” to push new ways of providing services in the public sector.
Its full-time staff would help transform the public sector by driving down costs and improving productivity, the Conservatives said.
Mr Cameron said he viewed public sector workers as vital to the task of changing Britain to create a ‘big society’, rather than ‘big government’.
“In a shift of power as radical as the right to buy your council house in the 1980s, we are inviting public sector staff directly to take control and transform our public services,” the Tory leader said.
“We will give them much more power to exercise their own judgement and at last be properly recognised and rewarded for hard work and innovation. We will massively scale back all the targets and bureaucracy that drives them mad. And we will give them the right to set up employee co-operatives, bid to take over services and be their own boss.”
Under a Conservative government nurses, teachers, civil servants and other public sector workers would be offered cash bonuses for innovating or exceeding expectations.
The Tories are also pledging to cut back on government checks, targets, inspections and procedural reporting, phase in the right to request flexible working and “back you against unfounded action and bureaucratic rules”.
