This government has proven woefully naive. Just look at the ‘Office for Value for Money’
Reeves’ failing Office for Value for Money showcases just how naive this government is, writes Eliot Wilson
Politicians who have never been in government often have a mystical belief in the power of efficiency savings. The public sector, they reason, is proverbially bloated and inefficient, and a stern approach to spending will inevitably allow billions of pounds to be recouped or saved.
This was the will o’the wisp foundation of Rachel Reeves’s announcement in 2023 that a Labour government would establish an “Office for Value for Money” (OfVM). Spurred by accusations of waste and corruption during the Covid-19 pandemic, the then-shadow chancellor said that the new body would scrutinise proposed spending to “root out waste and make our economy stronger”. She must have been thrilled to see The Daily Mirror characterise it as an “anti-waste hit squad [which] will stop taxpayer cash being flushed down [the] drain”.
The Office for Value for Money was formally established last October as “a multidisciplinary team of civil servants based in HM Treasury”. Some eyebrows were raised when the independent chair was announced as David Goldstone; his tenure as chief executive of the , chief operating officer of the Ministry of Defence and a non-executive director of High Speed Two (HS2) Ltd did not point to an exemplary track record in prudence and ruthless efficiency.
It was also disappointing that this new body, deemed so critical to economic growth, was time-limited to a year, with the possibility of a renewal of its mandate on 30 October 2025.
These anxieties have been deepened by the House of Commons Treasury Committee. Last week it published a report in which it set out the weaknesses and shortcomings of the new institution. As well as noting its short intended lifespan, the committee observed that the OfVM has only 12 full-time staff in addition to its chair; by comparison, the National Audit Office employs nearly 1,000 people.
The committee wanted much more detail on the OfVM’s work: how it would avoid duplication with other organisations, how it would scrutinise investment proposals in the spending review, which departmental agencies and budgets it would scrutinise, what metrics it would use to assess its own performance and how its recommendations would be implemented.
The chair of the committee, Dame Meg Hillier, pulled no punches. She is an experienced scrutineer, having chaired the Public Accounts Committee for nine years, but hardly a tribal opponent of the government or the Prime Minister; her Hackney South and Shoreditch constituency is next door-but-one to Sir Keir Starmer’s Holborn and St Pancras. But she was excoriating.
“The Office for Value for Money is an understaffed, poorly defined organisation which has been set up with a vague remit and no clear plan to measure its effectiveness. All of which leads me to feel this initiative may be something of a red herring.”
This confirms that the OfVM, like so many of the current government’s innovations, were sketched out loosely, with no critical challenge and in search of transient political advantage. One could also look at the Foreign Office’s now all-but-redundant “China audit”, which I examined a few weeks ago, or the UK Border Security Command, which has hardly moved the dial on illegal immigration after six months.
When a party returns to government after a long period in opposition – in this case 14 years – it will inevitably face a steep learning curve. Of Starmer’s first cabinet of 22, only five ministers had previous experience at the top level. The historian Sir Anthony Seldon remarked recently with exasperation that “there hasn’t been another Labour premiership which has begun so naively”.
I fear it is worse than that. The shortcomings of the OfVM demonstrate not only naivete, but a high-mindedly stubborn refusal to learn. The phrase “I’m not going to take any lectures” is a ministerial staple across the despatch box in the House of Commons.
Maybe ministers should take lectures. The Office for Value for Money was announced to give a political boost. It sounded good, so no one stopped to ask how it would work, what it needed to be effective or if it was practical. It stands as the epitome of a common ministerial inability to distinguish between saying something and doing something.
A select committee has now raised fundamental questions about the OfVM. The Chancellor of the Exchequer could engage seriously and openly with this report; or we could hear a jumble of buzzwords from Rachel Reeves like “growth”, “ruthless”, “laser-like focus” and “mission”. Which do readers think is the more likely outcome?
Eliot Wilson is a writer and strategic adviser