Identifying the reforms and investments needed to meet long-term challenges across government departments, a team of distinguished academics examine the spending issues and constraints facing public services, the policy and delivery challenges across government and look at how public spending reforms have fared so far. A vital source for those wishing to make the spending review process more open, the Alternative Comprehensive Spending Review is essential reading for anyone interested in public administration and public policy.
As Gordon Brown launches the fifth Comprehensive Spending Review since New Labour came to power in 1997, we might ask ourselves why all the debate about priorities and policies has remained firmly under wraps in the Whitehall village. It was, after all, Brown himself who announced that the Comprehensive Spending Review would be carried out through "national debate" rather than the secretive process which has come to decide our national priorities.
In this, the first "alternative" spending review to be published through the Herbert Simon Institute at the University of Manchester, the editors aim to draw back the veil of secrecy and let the real debate on the long-term trends and challenges that will shape the next decade begin. Identifying the reforms and investments needed to meet long-term challenges across government departments, a team of distinguished academics examine the spending issues and constraints facing public services, the policy and delivery challenges across government and look at how public spending reforms have fared so far. A vital source for those wishing to make the spending review process more open, the Alternative Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 is essential reading for anyone interested in public administration and public policy.
As Gordon Brown launches the fifth Comprehensive Spending Review since New Labour came to power in 1997, we might ask ourselves why all the debate about priorities and policies has remained firmly under wraps in the Whitehall village. It was, after all, Brown himself who announced that the Comprehensive Spending Review would be carried out through "national debate" rather than the secretive process which has come to decide our national priorities.
In this, the first 'alternative' spending review to be published through the Herbert Simon Institute at the University of Manchester, the editors aim to draw back the veil of secrecy and let the real debate on the long-term trends and challenges that will shape the next decade begin.
Identifying the reforms and investments needed to meet long-term challenges across government departments, a team of distinguished academics examine the spending issues and constraints facing public services, the policy and delivery challenges across government and look at how public spending reforms have fared so far. A vital source for those wishing to make the spending review process more open, the Alternative Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 is essential reading for anyone interested in public administration and public policy.
List of tables, figures and boxes
Contributors' details
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Section I: The context
1.Overview: a milestone for progress, Matt Baker
2.Public finances: the constraints, Robert Chote
3.Spending Reviews and Public Service Agreements - policy and practice, Colin
Talbot
Section II: Departmental reviews
4. Department for Education and Skills, Alan Dyson
5.Department of Health, Kieran Walshe
6.Local Government, Carole Johnson
7.The Home Office, Stephen Brookes
8.Foreign and Commonwealth Office, David Steven
9.Department for International Development, Willy McCourt
10. Department of Trade and Industry, Francis Chittenden & Ray Oakey
11.Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Joe Ravetz
12.Department for Work and Pensions, Jay Wiggan
13.An effective centre for government - the future of the Cabinet Office and
HM Treasury, Colin Talbot
Section III: Cross-cutting issues
14.Towards the next phase of employment policy, Jill Rubery
15.Sustainable Development Strategy, Joe Ravetz
16.Social enterprise, Rob Paton
17.Mind the gap: bridging the gender divide, Claire Annesley, Francesca Gains
& Kirstein Rummery
18.eGovernment: terminology and scope, Peter Kawalek
19.Government regulation and small firms, Francis Chittenden & Tim Ambler
20.Using the private sector to finance capital expenditure: the evidence Jean
Shaoul
21.Choice in public services, Ian Greener & Ann Mahon
22.Public sector pay, Damian Grimshaw
Statistical annex -- .
Colin Talbot is co-director of the Centre for Public Policy and Management and the director of the Herbert Simon Institute at Manchester Business School. Matt Baker is Editorial Executive in the Herbert Simon Institute at Manchester Business School -- .
