Cameron attacks Labour bureaucracy

The Labour government has prized "bureaucratic neatness" above all else, David Cameron has said.

In a speech to the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the Conservative leader said a regime of "government by management consultant and policy by PowerPoint" had been socially destructive.

It had resulted, he said, in the closure of post offices, libraries, police stations and small shops, with GPs surgeries now under threat.

"For the last decade or so, in the name of modernisation, rationalisation and efficiency, we have been living under a regime of government by management consultant and policy by PowerPoint," he said.

"The result has not been a contented, streamlined nation humming with efficiency and gleaming with modernity.

"The result has been an explosion of bureaucracy, cost and irritation, endless upheavals and pointless reorganisations, the  elbowing aside of colourful, human, informal relationships based on common sense and trust in favour of the grey, mechanical, joyless mantras of the master planner with his calculations, projections and impact assessments."

The outcome had been "socially destructive" but also "economically inefficient", he said, undermining institutions that are the foundations of society and creating extra costs for the state to pick up.

"All this because we live under a regime that prizes bureaucratic neatness above all else," he went on.

"A regime - indeed a whole culture that it has spawned - which knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."

Under a Conservative government, Cameron said, the strengthening of society would be "at the heart of government action".