King’s Speech

Lord Barber of Chittlehampton Excerpts

Thursday 14th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Barber of Chittlehampton (Lab)]

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the excellent contribution from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle. Her messages are directly relevant also to the area where I live, the south-west of England, and I congratulate her on her thoughts. It is also always daunting to follow the legendary noble Lord, Lord Burns, but that is the order in which the speakers turned out.

Yesterday’s gracious Speech emphasised “economic security”. Public expenditure is vital in achieving that. I strongly support the Chancellor’s spending reviews and Budgets. Her goals could not be more important: to create the conditions for growth, to maintain and improve public services, and to manage and reduce debt. I realise that the conflict in the Middle East poses significant challenges but, thanks to the progress already made, we face them with enhanced resilience.

The public debate and ours in this Chamber tend to focus on the amount government spends and the level of taxation. These are indeed fundamental questions, but I will focus on two related questions that perhaps get less attention. First, what matters most to the citizen and to economic growth is not just the amount we spend but how well we spend it. Every day, the Government spend £3.5 billion. How do we maximise the public value of every one of those tax pounds? Secondly, how might we innovate in the way that we raise and allocate funding for the social outcomes that we need?

I will start with the first question. Maximising public value surely demands that, at every level—from a teacher in a classroom or a nurse in a hospital ward to a civil servant or a Minister in Whitehall—there is a constant, daily focus on delivering real value. The noble Baroness, Lady Finn, made a similar point about Civil Service productivity. This is not a new insight; a previous Parliament concluded that “officials at every level will be ordered to make due, swift and good execution without tarrying or delaying”. The sentiment sounds contemporary, even if the language does not. It is from 1376. Parliaments have been urging more effective and rapid delivery for at least 750 years, and rightly so, because Governments spend other people’s money and should be firmly held to account for what they deliver in return.

To take an example, we are now seeing a welcome increase in defence expenditure, and we already know that there needs to be more still. In this dangerous world, the public will want to know both what capabilities that extra investment will provide and that there is urgent, evident progress towards their realisation. Similarly, there will surely be further growth in health expenditure and, again, in return, the public will expect to see measurably reduced waiting times and significantly improved care. We have made a start, but there is much more to do.

Willingness to continue paying taxes has always depended on the impact that results from those taxes. The world over, this pressure to deliver public value is sharper now than ever. But what exactly is public value? How do you know it when you see it and how do you monitor it? At times, the Treasury in this country has led the world in thinking through these questions—I am going back to the noble Lord, Lord Burns, to Gordon Brown’s time as Chancellor and to the work of the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson, who was in charge of public expenditure back then. Later, in 2017, and building on that earlier work, David Gauke, as Chief Secretary, commissioned a report on public value from me. It was strongly welcomed at the time but sadly got lost in an ever-changing world of Chief Secretaries and the pandemic. Now might be the time to revive and build on that agenda.

The report described four elements of managing public value. The first is inputs: is the allocated funding being efficiently managed? The second, which my noble friend Lady Anderson emphasised, is outcomes: are we making progress towards the intended outcomes that the money was allocated for, and how do we know? The third is engagement: are the intended beneficiaries willing to take their share of responsibility for delivering the outcomes? For example, health outcomes are improved by people who manage diet and exercise; getting into employment is enhanced by people actively seeking work rather than waiting for it to come to them; and, in schools and universities, we need people to study hard rather than just show up briefly. In each of these cases, the same amount of public expenditure will deliver greatly enhanced outcomes if the beneficiary engages. This is important to public value. Finally, there is stewardship: as the funding is spent, is it also enhancing the underlying quality of a service—its technology, buildings, resilience, workforce, skills, leadership and commitment—thus leaving the service better than it was found, all the time?

By tracking indicators relevant to these four elements in close-to-real time, we can measure the impact our public expenditure is having and adjust implementation as necessary. Some social outcomes partnerships are already well advanced in this respect, which leads me to my second point: innovation. The Treasury recently established, and allocated £500 million over 10 years for, the Better Futures Fund. It is boldly aimed at solving some of the most complex social problems affecting children and young people. The fund will add to Britain’s already world-leading experience in social outcomes partnerships, and the fund will become the largest of its kind globally. It builds on the Life Chances Fund, established by the previous Government in 2016, and the work over many years of the great Sir Ronald Cohen.

The characteristics of such social outcomes partnerships make them a major innovation. They attract philanthropic and private investors, which, in the case of the Better Futures Fund, could double the funding that the Government have made, making the total £1 billion. They engage local government charities and social enterprises as partners in prevention, not just cure. They work exceptionally well for those tough, cross-cutting challenges that bedevil public policy. Crucially, for each funded scheme, there are defined outcomes, and government outcomes payments are paid only once the defined outcomes have been delivered and independently verified. There is increased prevention, collaborative partnerships, devolved delivery, high-quality data analysis, measurement of public value, and evidence from ATQ Consultants that such social outcomes partnerships deliver up to £9 of public value for every £1 they spend.

To conclude, with such innovative approaches to delivery and a consistent focus on delivering public value throughout the public services, we can enhance public sector productivity, contribute to private sector productivity and create the conditions for growth. The downward spiral that followed the financial crisis of 2008, with its declining return on investment, is not inevitable. We can turn it into an upward spiral with a rising return on investment.

A year of delivery lies ahead. In time, we might even delight people, perhaps including our ancestors from 1376.