Our vital public services are under constant strain. Be it Whitehall departments, councils or NHS trusts, the public rightly expect services that are responsive, reliable and high quality, yet those delivering them are often asked to do more year after year within increasingly constrained funding.
That is why the debate about efficiency is often a difficult one. For many, the term still carries the weight of austerity, when it was often used as a byword for cuts rather than a serious attempt by policymakers to transform how services work and spend taxpayers’ cash. In some cases, cuts have not only reduced capacity, but actively made the system less efficient as public sector bodies have been forced into making short-term decisions that have simply created more substantial problems down the line.
Yet it is also true that, even after more than a decade and a half of constraint, there remain many opportunities to get better outcomes for every pound of public money spent. In some areas, inefficiency has been reinforced by fragmented structures, duplicated functions and processes designed around organisational boundaries rather than what the public actually want.
The real question is what kind of efficiency we pursue, and whether it strengthens the system or weakens it. Done well, efficiency should be about maximising the impact of public spending on people’s lives, supporting better outcomes, reducing friction in delivery and making it easier for public servants to apply their expertise where it adds the most value. That means moving away from an approach focused solely on headline savings and towards one that is honest about trade-offs, long-term capability and resilience.
This matters for trust as much as it does for delivery. Public services sit at the front line of the relationship between the state and the population. When systems fail, it is often frontline staff who bear the brunt of frustration, even when the underlying causes lie in the way services are designed, commissioned or governed rather than those making them a reality.
Before coming to parliament, I worked in the NHS and served as a councillor on a small district council. In both roles, I saw dedicated staff doing their best for the public, often within systems that made their jobs harder. Budget pressures were always part of the picture, but so were the quieter frustrations: processes that had mushroomed up over time; duplication between teams; decisions being pushed into the short term because stepping back and fixing the underlying issues was not a possibility. Those experiences left me with a strong sense that efficiency as a byword for cuts makes life harder for everyone, but done well, it can genuinely improve services and working lives.
It is with this perspective that I am chairing the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Public Sector Efficiency, which recognises that past approaches have too often been narrowly focused on cost control, without sufficient attention to how work is done or how improvement is sustained.
The APPG’s focus is on understanding how better ways of working can strengthen public services and improve outcomes. That means looking seriously at how departments collaborate, how services are commissioned and delivered, and how barriers between organisations can be reduced. We are also committed to learning from what works elsewhere. The APPG has already launched a commission to examine international examples of effective public sector efficiency, with further work planned in areas such as health and education.
A core principle of this work is that reform cannot be designed in the abstract. Those working on the front lines are often best placed to identify where time, money and effort are being wasted, and where small changes could unlock meaningful improvements. Bringing together parliamentarians with practitioners and experts who understand delivery realities is therefore central to the group’s approach.
Collaboration matters. Better outcomes are rarely achieved in isolation. Whether between departments, across different tiers of government, or with partners in industry and the voluntary sector, shared learning and joint problem solving are essential if efficiency is to support, rather than undermine, service quality.
If we are serious about renewing the state and restoring confidence in public services, we cannot allow efficiency to remain synonymous with cuts alone. Reclaiming the concept means acknowledging the legacy of austerity, being honest about where money is still wasted, and working together to build public services that are both effective and resilient. The APPG would value your contribution; take a look at our website at appgpse.org.uk for more information.
Josh Newbury is Labour MP for Cannock Chase andchair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Public Sector Efficiency