Philip Hammond to announce plans to boost civil service productivity and efficiency

Tomorrow's Guardian is reporting that Shadow Chief Secretary Philip Hammond - "increasingly seen as a pivotal figure in a future Cameron government" - is to make a speech in the morning which will be about embedding a new culture of efficiency and productivity in the civil service.

According to the paper's report, his proposal include:

• Civil servants would be put under a statutory duty to protect public money, with the honours system being discreetly used to reward those civil servants who dedicate themselves to improving productivity;
• Civil servants would receive a week's pay for each year of service in redundancy (rather than the current month's pay for each year);
• There would be a presumption that government services would be contracted on a strict payments by results regime, with  Whitehall departments gaining the right to bid to run another's services;
• All public sector property would be handed to the private sector for management, requiring Whitehall departments to pay rent on the property and giving them incentives to sell surplus land and assets; departments would then become tenants and pay rent, giving them incentives to use property more efficiently.

The paper also suggest that David Cameron will ask senior shadow cabinet members to agree their future spending budgets "as a condition of being offered their departmental portfolio at the time of the election".

Read the full report here.

Jonathan Isaby