LP's blog

The implementation of a plan to merge and renew three out of date hospitals into a superhospital in London has been criticised by the Public Accounts Committee. The original plan estmated the total cost to be £300m and the project to be completed by 2006. But my May 2005 costs had risen to £894m and the hospital was expected to be finished only by 2013. The superhospital plans were cancelled in June 2006 after 5 years of struggle to get the project on course.

The Department of Health left the planning and managing of such a huge project to local staff who were not capable of overseeing the work carried out by DH's chosen PFI partners. The department did not set out sound plans from the outset and it was made worse by the fact that the creation of the superhotel was left in the hands of amateur and incompetent civil servants.  

According to the official figures obtained by the Lib Dems, many information technology projects across government have overrun their initial budgets by more than £260 million over the last five years. The Department of the Environment Food and Rural (Defra) was the worst offender with the highest proportional overruns. Defra managed to run over budget by an average of 46 per cent with one scheme costing the department 72 per cent more than anticipated.The Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of Education had such poor management systems in place that they could not provide sufficient data. The Treasury itself overran by 7.3 per cent on its own projects.

Tony Blair said on the BBC's Politics Show yesterday that Britain's prisons are "full to bursting point" but suggested that the public should be relieved that dangerous prisoners are being locked up for longer. The PM also said that the Home Office is facing some big problems.

Indeed, the Home Office and its problems have dominated the headlines for weeks now. And it does seem to be getting worse by the day with new revelations of its undone work and nonfulfillment of its responsibilities appearing daily.

The government is determined to force home owners to pay more than £200 for a green energy certificate when they put their house on the market. HIPs (Home Information Packs) which will be obligatory from June this year, will rate houses' energy efficiency and must be available even before potential buyers view a property.

The initiative might encourage some people to make their homes more energy efficient but more likely it will reduce the housing stock and force prices even higher. Older houses are obviously less energy efficient and the new complication arising from the certificates might deter people from selling their properties.

The celebrations of 2012 days left to the London Olympic Games a few days ago were overshadowed by the publication of a critical Commons Committee report. MPs (mainly Labour) criticised the planners for poor management of the games' finances.

The cost of the delivery has increased from £2.4bn to 3.3bn. This is a result of the planners not thoroughly thinking through the budget before they submitted their bid. Now the government wants taxpayers to foot the bill.

Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office Minister, is set to announce today (23 January) at IPPR the relaunch of a website for complaints on red tape. The site will allow business and lobby groups to complain about specific regulations. The government will then review the proposals, repealing some laws but if it will reject a suggestion it will explain why it is necessary.

Sounds like a good idea.... but it was tried before and failed due to the lack of interest from businesses. So why bother again? Companies have heard it many times before that the government will listen to them and will ease their red tape burden. But the opposite has happened - rules and regulations have increased significantly since 1997. 

According to the Telegraph, defence spending is lowest since the 1930s. Government figures show that 2.5% of the UK's GDP (About £32bn) was likely to be spent on defence in 2005-06 compared with 4.4% in 1978-88.

An MoD spokesperson said that the spending has increased in real terms. Obviously this is not enough to secure the efficiency of our defence forces and equipment. The UK's armed forces are clearly "overstretched" - it has 4 ongoing commitments (Iraq, Afganistan, Sierra Leone and Kosovo) operating with low levels of deployment and falling number of new recruits. Also, the current spending puts in risk the necessary renewal and upgrade of MoD's fleet.

Since the new government contract with GPs, the average pay for GPs is now more than £100,000. The new contract was designed to give general practices additional funds to invest in improving and developing services to patients. But it was not anticipated that GPs would take higher share of income in profits and would not use the money to imrpove the services.

GP earnings have risen 63% in three years but many of them have given up out-of-hours work, home visits, working during the weekends and on average a GP works only 44 hours a week (from the Guardian).

British film industry seems to be doing better than ever. The UK Film Council recently revealed that £840m was spent last year (up by 48% from 2005). Also more studios are coming to Britain. The change has occured after the introduction of a tax regime designed to facilitate low-budget domestic productions and lure big-budget investment. Gordon has been offering up to 20% tax relief to the film industry since 2005.

This is a fine example of government picking winners. Why does it consider producing films to be such an important industry? After all, it's existence is not in any shape or form crucial for the wealth of the nation and making films is still the prerogative of a small elite. Now the government promotes their business further.

Lord Wilson, a former Cabinet Secretary, is writing in today's Telegraph how Tony Blair has "brought in an increasing number of consultants at huge cost and created a dizzying array of units for modernisation and delivery, armed with centralised targets and league tables."  He argues that this has ruined people's trust in the Civil Service.

Gordon Brown promised in successive budget speeches

• to rebuild or refurbish all 3,500 secondary schools before 2020
• to spend £3bn a year on rebuilding or refurbishing
• to complete 100 schools by this year and 200 the next
• to sign 100 building contracts in 2006

But according to the figures obtained by the Conservatives, the schools investment programme has become mired in red tape. Nothing really has happened since Gordon announced the plans in 2004:

• not a single project has been completed
• the Government expects to open only 1
  

Today's papers report that many schools are now achieving the government's target of five good GCSE's but the figures are much lower when maths and English are taken into account. Some schoolmasters encourage pupils to take easier subjects to gain a higher position for their school in league tables.

Tony Blair has promised to offset emissions from his holiday flights after opposition parties and green groups questioned his leadership on climate change. But offsetting emissions is not a solution to the problem. It is a great idea to pay for plating trees but it won't change our behaviour. Carbon offsetting only allows us to believe we can carry on polluting. Also, the timing is critical: "emissions saved today are far more valuable, in terms of reducing climate change, than emissions saved in 10 years' time, yet the trees you plant start absorbing carbon long after your fact

The re-elected Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, yesterday announced his plans to nationalise the main telecoms company and the likely nationalisation of a power company. The announcement is part of President Chavez's pledge "to radicalise his administration during his new 6-year term and fully convert Venezuela into a socialist state (FT)."  

According to the the Telegraph, HMRC has spent £7m on telling staff how to tidy their desks. This is part of a programme called Lean, introduced by consultants Unipart to improve the performance of civil servants more used to dealing with red tape. Some staff have reportedly black tape fixed to their desks to mark where items should be placed....

How can we be convinced the HMRC is fit for purpose if it needs to be told such things at the taxpayers cost?!?

The BBC reported last week of the poor state of military housing. A number of pictures of homes and barracks with mildew, broken pipes and cracked walls have appreared in the news and it is reported that servicemen are leaving the army due to poor accommodation.

Today's papers are reporting further mismanagement of the NHS. A leaked document has revealed that the government expects a shortage of nurses and GPs in four years but the NHS will have to reduce the number of hospital doctors to save money. Also, many trusts are cancelling and postponing operations and treatments to reduce the deficit for the financial year.

David Willetts, the shadow education secretary, has revealed through a number of parlimentary questions that the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) - one of the government's biggest education quangos - has "wasted" more than £100m on staff redundancies and on several internal re-organisations.

A Guardian survey has revealed that many councils are ignoring the threat of climate change and taking no action to reduce the rising carbon emissions of their residents. "The Guardian contacted all 442 local authorities in England, Wales and Scotland to ask whether they had any schemes planned to change household behaviour, either through incentives or penalties. Of 64 local authorities that responded, 30 said they had no plans to tackle emissions. A further 26 said they had introduced only limited incentives to encourage green behaviour, most of which are aimed at meeting government recycling targets. Only six local authorities said they were taking significant steps to curb household emissions."

The Times reports that many high skilled immigrants have failed to renew their visas due to the government changing the rules allowing such migrants to work in the UK. Since the introduction of the programme more than 20,000 people - mainly entrepreneurs, scientists and IT specialists - have moved to the UK and now the new rules are applied to them retrospectively.