Matt Ridley: Britain’s staggering productivity crisis explains so many of our woes

How is it possible that the public sector is no more productive today than it was in 1996, before the internet took off?

Britain has a chronic productivity problem. As the American economy marches upwards in output per person, Britain limps behind. As Ben Southwood, Samuel Hughes and Sam Bowman have calculated, if GDP per hour worked here had continued growing at the rate it grew between 1979 and 2008, we would now be 25 per cent richer and annual tax revenues would be £274 billion higher.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: I approve of performance pay for the public sector

On principle, I like Nicola Willis' idea of performance pay for the chief executives in the public sector.

It's actually not a new idea, we were doing it until Jacinda's lot got in and Chris Hipkins, the then-relevant minister, cancelled it.

And it was pretty generous, up 15 percent on top of base pay. Since some of those guys in the public sector get paid close to $700,00 a year, that's another $100,000 if they strike their targets.

David Farrar: Hipkins wrong

Newshub reports:

Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins has stood by increasing the public service workforce during his time in government, saying it’s been proportionate to the growth in population.

The Coalition Government has directed the public services to cut costs by between 6.5 and 7.5 percent to help reduce annual public service spending by $1.5 billion. It’s resulted in thousands of jobs proposed to be axed across the sector.