UK Parliament / Open data

Productivity

Proceeding contribution from John Redwood (Conservative) in the House of Commons on Wednesday, 17 June 2015. It occurred during Opposition day on Productivity.

I agree, but only if we have ineffective or over-the-top regulation. Removing it can give more people access to the market and provide a greater competitive challenge, but we need some regulation, because we need rules and certain guarantees in the market.

Let us take a sector that I asked the shadow Chancellor about. It was a problem that, in the Labour years, we had a long period of practically no growth in public sector productivity. I am the first to admit that the concept of productivity is more difficult in parts of the public sector. People actually like more teachers relative to the number of pupils, because they hope that that will create better teaching and a better system in classes, but it means that productivity falls. That means that we need other parts of the public sector, where the productivity issue is more straightforward or more like the private sector, to be even better, so that the overall performance of the public sector does not lag behind and cause difficulties. As we have quite a big public sector in this economy, the performance of the public sector is very important. It also happens to be the area where Ministers have most control and most direct influence, so it is the area that this House should spend more time on, because we are collectively responsible for the performance of the public sector. I think most parties now agree that we want to get more for less in the public sector, so that we can control public spending. There are disagreements about how much control we should exert on public spending, but I hope there is agreement that if it is possible to do more for less while improving—or not damaging—quality, that is a good thing to do.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
597 c402 
Session
2015-16
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
Back to top