Cameron pledges 'big change'

Tory leader David Cameron has told business leaders he would eradicate "Big Government" if he became Prime Minister.

Mr Cameron accused top civil servants of "deliberate extravagance" at the taxpayers' expense.

He said bills for hotels, taxis and new headquarters, combined with wasteful bureaucracy, added up to millions of pounds and created higher taxes.

Mr Cameron promised a "big change" if the Tories come to power - reducing public spending by cutting Whitehall waste.

"Big centralised bureaucracies are incompetent and they can't be trusted. They're casual about spending our money. Don't tell me we can't do better," he said.

"Well let me make it clear: a big change is on the way. We will be a Government for the post-bureaucratic age - careful with public money, competent in public administration, conscious of the limitations of Government."

He continued: "Look at how things are now. The result of modern bureaucracy is chronic, unforgivable waste - waste which feeds directly into higher tax bills for families and businesses.

"The Department for Work and Pensions misplaced £2.5 million last year - most of it not through fraud, but through error. Some £500 million was spent on the National Literacy Strategy - with no impact on reading levels.

"Nearly £900 million was spent on fighting truancy - with no impact on truancy. The NHS has been through a series of massive upheavals in the last ten years - apparently the cost of all that was £3 billion and the result is a system no better at doing its job.

"Big government and the bureaucratic age are institutionally wasteful. But it's worse than that: what really gets me is the deliberate extravagance committed by the people at the top of the Government machine.

"Apparently, managers of the exams watchdog the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, spent more than £1.6 million of taxpayers money in just six months - on hotels and conference centres for themselves.

"Officials at the Home Office spend £800,000 a year on taxis - charged straight to you and me. The MoD has committed £2.3 billion to a new headquarters for itself - while our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are going without the kit they need, and their families are living in substandard housing."

He added: "We will only be able to reduce state spending if we cut the costs of government.

"Our very system of government - the model of management that we will inherit if we win power - will have to change.

"We're living with a 20th century model of Government for a 21st century economy: we've got decentralised, footloose, global companies; we've got an informed, activist, grown-up population; we've got amazing technology, enabling co-operation on a truly liberal basis - bottom-up and self-regulated.

"But we've got a Government that tries to use that technology not to empower and liberate, but to control. Big, cumbersome, centralised bureaucracies, trying to control a world that has moved on.

"I believe that the days of 'Big Government' are numbered. The bureaucratic age is coming to an end. People just won't stand for it anymore and the sooner ministers realise it the better."

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