Weekly Column
When I sat down with the Chancellor ahead of the Budget, I put forward the case for measures to ease taxes, boost Norfolk’s economy and small firms, improve infrastructure, and provide targeted support for the most vulnerable. My points were based on conversations with local people, businesses, and a survey of constituents. As I am writing this column ahead of the Budget, I will return to the specific measures and announcements and what they mean for North West Norfolk in my column next week.
But one of the areas where new measures have just been announced are delivering better value for money for taxpayers. Key to achieving that is making services more efficient and focused on the front line and driving out waste from the system.
Increasing productivity in the public sector back to pre-Covid levels would save the equivalent of £20 billion a year according to the Office of Budget Responsibility. That will help control the size of the state as simply spending more and more taxpayer’s money – paid for by taxes or borrowing as the Labour Party plans - is not the answer to delivering better public services.
Take the police. A common complaint people still have is they don’t see enough police out and about. Initiatives Norfolk Police have introduced such as park, walk, and talk are designed to increase visibility and deter crime and 269 new officers have been recruited for Norfolk. Cutting bureaucracy will help - the Police Productivity Review found that up to 38 million hours of officer time could be saved every year. If 500,000 hours were saved then police officers could attend over 300,000 burglaries.
New measures announced will enable officers to spend more time on frontline tasks and fighting crime. For example, interviewing witnesses and victims via video call to improve speed of service; piloting the use of drones in some police incidents like traffic accidents, and using Artificial Intelligence to triage 101 calls to get members of the public the right support faster.
There is considerable scope to utilise technology better in the NHS and we will see this on our doorstep as the new Diagnostic Assessment Centre at QEH will mean more scans and earlier diagnosis. In addition, rolling out MRI scanners upgraded with AI designed to recognise patterns in scans will cut scan times by over a third and mean people getting their results sooner.
To help deal with the backlog in court cases £170 million will be invested in new measures to save up to 55,000 hours a year of administrative time through digitising jury bundles, new software to streamline probation decisions and provide probation officers with more robust data on whether offenders are safe to release. AI can also help reduce fraud across government funded by £34 million.
Whether the police, healthcare, courts, or other areas there is scope to deliver better services for the public. While debates about cutting taxes will always attract more focus, by investing in measures that result in new ways of working and savings, services can become more responsive. That means faster medical scans, swifter justice, police focused on fighting crime, and reducing fraud against the taxpayers.
First published in Lynn News, 8 March 2024
