South Norfolk MP Richard Bacon has urged ministers and senior civil servants to study a new report on the delivery of public services in order to learn lessons from past mistakes, and to avoid failures like the tax credits mess which can make life harder for vulnerable people.

Mr Bacon was speaking as the Commons public accounts committee published its report  into the delivery of high-quality public services for all. The report looks at both good and bad examples of how public services are being run and combines the lessons learnt into 10 steps to improve public services.

These steps include understanding the needs of customers, monitoring service performance and providing redress when things go wrong. The report points to the tax credits fiasco as an example of how poor performance can undermine confidence in public services as a whole.

Mr Bacon, a member of the committee, said today: “Common sense is often missing from the way some public services are run. The public are subjected to schemes that seem like a good idea in Whitehall but which fail to deliver real improvements.

“In some cases Whitehall can even make life harder for people who are already in need of assistance, as we have seen with the tax credits mess. Failures like these damage trust in public services.

“We all want the best from our public services and I hope government departments will heed the committee's advice to achieve it”.

18 July 2006

See also:
PAC REPORT: Delivering high quality public services for all