Liam Byrne, Cabinet Office Minister, has signaled a shift in Government policy away from the target culture, as evidence mounts that it has had a devastating effect on customers of public services.

But he did not commit to a review of management practices, instead placing his trust on entitlements and incentives.

In an interview, Mr Byrne said: ‘We need a power shift from Whitehall ministers and civil servants that currently have the power and move it to citizens. We know the argument for public services has got to change so we have been developing a strategy that takes public services away from a target culture to giving people rights and entitlement to core public services.’

The pressing need for smarter management in the public sector has been addressed by leading columnists in national newspapers. But in an extraordinary irony, Will Hutton and Andrew Rawnsley in The Guardian/Observer raise questions that only their former colleague Simon Caulkin had the experience to address authoritatively.

Mr Caulkin’s column was dropped in June amid a storm of protest from long-standing Observer subscribers and opinion-formers (HCF News, 15 June 09). Over 80 individuals, including some of the most influential leadership academics and authors in the English-speaking world, have now signed the formal letter of protest, which The Observer has refused to publish.

There is half a century of evidence into effective management, from the successes of W Edwards Deming in the 1950s to more recent work by Jeffrey Pfeffer, Lynda Gratton and others – yet almost no one in Government or major businesses bases their approach to management and leadership upon evidence. Instead, the emphasis remains upon restructuring, incentives and manipulation of ‘resources’.

The June 09 conference of the British Medical Association heard George Rae, a member of the BMA council, say that the 400 deaths at Stafford Hospital in the recent scandal were directly attributed to Government targets distorting priorities away from patient care.