Public-service performance targets 'a rod for our own back', admits Blair

Tony Blair admitted yesterday that the Government had made a rod for its own back by setting over-ambitious performance targets for public services.

His comments come amid mounting fears among ministers that they will miss many of their main targets, fuelling the belief that Labour has failed to deliver its promises to improve public services. One ministerial aide said: "We don't get any credit when we meet our targets, but we get pilloried when we miss them."

Mr Blair said tough goals had been set to keep up the pressure on the Government to bring in radical reforms and improve services. He said in a newspaper interview: "They were in part constructed as a rod for our own back in order to make sure that we were as bold and ambitious as you could be."

Labour has recently abandoned some of its targets for cutting drug abuse and traffic congestion and removing illegal asylum-seekers and has hinted that others may down- graded, including a pledge that 50 per cent of pupils will enter higher education.

But the Prime Minister said: "It is important not to get it out of context. The vast bulk of the targets stay and will be met." He said critics were wrong to describe primary school results as a failure because a target was missed by one or two points. "We have had the best primary school results the country has ever seen with literally hundreds of thousands of children getting better exam results than five years ago," he said.

On transport, the Prime Minister said circumstances had changed since the pledge to cut traffic congestion by 5 per cent was made. "People thought that if you increased the numbers on public transport, you would diminish the numbers on roads. Actually, as a result of massively increased economic activity, and a million and a half jobs, there has been a 20 per cent increase in road usage and a 20 per cent increase in rail usage. So some of those targets change because circumstances change."

He admitted the public wanted the Government to get a grip on transport. Transport had not received the same priority as health and education since Labour took power, but a huge investment was now being made, he said.

The Opposition stepped up its attack on the targets system by criticising the Home Office yesterday for failing to publish a progress report on its goals. Oliver Letwin, the shadow Home Secretary, said: "This is a Government that depends on initiatives and targets rather than on a long-term coherent strategy.

"The fact that the Home Office is not publishing the performance assessment of its targets, promised many months ago, makes a further mockery of this approach."

The Government claims that it is on course to meet nine out of 10 goals, but the Tories claim it will miss three quarters of the targets.