by The Budget will include an £800 million package of technology reforms designed to speed up NHS outcomes and reduce administrative tasks for the police.
The Chancellor said there is “too much waste in the system” as he announced on Sunday a series of measures to free up time for those on the front line of public services.
As part of the Treasury reforms, police will use drones to assess incidents such as traffic collisions and deploy artificial intelligence (AI) to cut scan times by a third.
The department said the changes, due in Wednesday’s Budget, could deliver £1.8 billion worth of public sector productivity benefits by 2029.
Officials said the move is in line with the high-spend, high-tax approach the UK Government has taken to see the country through the coronavirus pandemic and reverse the energy shocks triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said: “We should not think that more spending buys us better public services.
“There is too much waste in the system and we want public servants to get back to doing what matters most: teaching our children, keeping us safe and treating us when we are sick.
“That’s why our plan is about reaping productivity rewards, from faster access to MRIs for patients to hundreds of thousands of police hours freed up to attend burglaries or domestic abuse incidents.”
In the health sector, the Treasury said that more than 130,000 patients a year, including those waiting for cancer results, can expect to receive their test results earlier as a result of 100 At least one MRI scanner in England will be upgraded with AI.
The cutting-edge technology will be trained to recognize patterns in scans through machine learning, which officials said could cut scan times by more than a third.
In policing, the Treasury said its reforms will help deliver the Police Productivity Review, which it said could save up to 38 million hours of officer time each year.
Mr Hunt will provide £230 million to implement time-saving technology, including funding for the automated restoration of personal information during evidence-gathering.
The process will apply to name badges in shopping incidents, irrelevant faces from body-worn cameras and number plates from video evidence.
Witnesses and victims will be allowed to be interviewed by video call to improve the speed of the service.
A pilot that allows officers to use drones to first respond to certain incidents such as traffic collisions will also be given the green light.
The drone information will be fed back to help forces assess the seriousness of the incident and the resources needed to deal with it, the Treasury said.
The non-emergency 101 service will use AI to triage callers, he said.
Other measures in the £800 million package include:
– £170 million for justice system reforms designed to save up to 55,000 hours a year of administrative time. Jury dockets will be digitized and there will be new software to streamline parole decisions.
– £165 million to go towards reducing last year’s local authority overspend of £670 million on children’s social care places across England by providing 200 extra children’s social care places, reducing reliance on expensive emergency places for children.
– A £34 million fund to reduce fraud by expanding the use of AI across government to make it easier to find and catch fraudsters, in a move expected to save £100 million.
– Accelerating the delivery of the current Department for Work and Pensions program with a £17 million investment to modernize its services and move away from paper-based communications.
– Reducing the time it takes planning officers to process applications by 30% through a new AI pilot project.
– Boosting support for children with additional needs through a £105 million fund to help provide 15 free special schools.
Darren Jones, Labour’s shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said the announcement was “spin without substance”.
“Britain is no better off after 14 years of Conservative economic failure,” he said.
“Millions of people are stuck on hospital waiting lists, our schools are crumbling and our streets are less safe. And yet all the Chancellor is offering is more spin without substance.
“It’s time for a change. Only Labor offers a long-term plan to grow our economy to provide more jobs, more investment and more money in people’s pockets.”
Mr Hunt is under pressure to deliver tax cuts in the Conservative government’s last fiscal statement before the next general election, which is widely expected in the autumn.
With the Chancellor’s numbers crunching in the coming days before his Budget is finalised, the Chancellor’s official “headroom” forecasts are understood to be against his plans to reduce borrowing in five years’ time after opposing the Government.
Treasury sources said this week that Mr Hunt is considering further pressure on public spending as a way to deliver the tax cuts demanded by some Tory MPs.
The announcement about boosting public sector productivity could be a move designed to free up money for pre-election giveaways.
According to The Sunday Times, Mr Hunt was told by the Office for Budget Responsibility on Wednesday that he has £12.8bn of headroom – more than £2bn less than the figure the Treasury is said to have been basing its calculations on before this.
The newspaper said the Chancellor is due to meet Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Sunday evening to make a final decision on whether a 2p cut in income tax is affordable.
