24 June 2010 | Paul Snell

BBC Radio 4
Monday, 8pm
3 out of 5

“When you ask the government machine to do something new, or spend money wisely – whichever government you are, you will find it very difficult to get your new policies into practice.”

Oh dear. This probably isn’t what the coalition government wanted to hear as it embarks on the toughest spending cuts in recent times.

But is this a new phenomenon? This programme wanted to see if the “government machine” really is getting worse at its job. A list of recent errors immediately springs to mind – top secret documents left on trains, lost laptops, memory sticks and a number of costly and incompetent procurement mistakes. When the NHS could be launched in eight months in the 1940s, these incidents further spoil the public’s current perception of government and the civil service.

There was a large range of factors blamed – the presidential style of Margaret Thatcher’s leadership, Tony Blair’s centralised special adviser-heavy approach, management-speak that “just became slogans adopted from discredited management agendas of old”. Even Yes, Minister had to shoulder criticism for the “corrosive effect” it had on relationships between ministers and mandarins.

Answers were few (more on that in part two this week) – although the new government was encouraged to take its time. “Haste does make waste, and things go badly wrong,” advised one expert.

Paul Snell is SM's senior features writer