Mr McCabe said:
"These technical notes show that we are making good progress in identifying how to meet our Efficient Government targets. We have identified £1.271 billion of the £1.5 billion gains. "I am now working with my Ministerial colleagues to identify the further efficiency gains which will allow us to meet our target in full. I remain firmly committed to identifying further savings.
"All money we save through measures such as better procurement, streamlined processes and better use of resources will be invested in improving service delivery. The Efficient Government initiative is a key part of our drive to ensure we invest taxpayers' money as wisely as possible - and these figures show good progress in identifying how best to do that."
I confess that achieving or realising efficiency gains would give me rather more comfort than simply "identifying" them.
But, in an effort to clarify the position, I made the mistake of looking at the technical notes (here). This deathless prose leapt out:
"An 'efficiency improvement' is any activity which improves the ratio of outputs to resource inputs. Such improvements may therefore arise in two ways:
i by producing the same outputs with fewer inputs. For the purposes of the Efficient Government Plan these are termed cash releasing savings,
ii by producing more or better outputs for the same inputs. For the purposes of the Efficient Government Plan these are termed time releasing savings.
1.7 For the saving to be included in the Efficient Government Plan it must be recurrent. The distinction between cash and time is proving less helpful as we go on. Now that we have identified £900 million, we propose to place less emphasis on the distinction in future."
After throwing up, I concluded that I could read no further. But I am sure that tomorrow's press will explain it all (or perhaps not).
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