WHEN Deputy Mike Hadley stood in the States yesterday to ask loaded questions of the Health and Social Services Department, deputies must have been wondering what sort of response to expect from the department’s under-pressure minister.

After his earlier ‘not a flaming clue’ comment about the additional 90 staff his team had recruited when the scale of HSSD’s budget overrun became clear, perhaps this was an opportunity for him really to put his foot in it.

Yet in the event he played a blinder.

More than that, he put down a benchmark for his ministerial colleagues in how the spenders should behave and how a change of focus can bring about the results taxpayers have been demanding since the States first started talking about – but not delivering – financial restraint.

The rate of increase in expenditure at Health has dramatically been turned around and it should end this year spending no more than it did in 2009, despite payroll costs going up by 4.5% purely because of the additional burden of the public sector’s gold-plated pension scheme.

But, more importantly, the board is to look at what it does, why, whether it is necessary and, if so, how it can be provided more cost-effectively.

That represents some of the first evidence that a department is finally embracing the ethos of the fundamental spending review to ensure that departments are engaged only in delivering essential services that cannot or should not be provided by the private sector.

And what a difference to hear the formerly defensive minister say that there is always scope in the States and elsewhere to improve productivity, cut cost and deliver better outcomes.

He, and his board colleagues, have clearly had their Damascene conversion moment and have also told staff they are developing a 10-year business plan and that the priority is to get control of the budget because, ‘as you will know we have a serious financial problem’.

However HSSD managed to effect its transformation of attitude, it is to be applauded.

And this is a prescription urgently needed by the rest of the States’ departments.