This may be of interest to council chiefs at a time when they are expected to find ever more efficiencies: The accounts for DCLG, just published, show an anticipated rise in central administration costs (for the next financial year) from £203.8m to £208.7m for the department.

A case of do as we say, not as we do?

I haven’t had a chance to number-crunch today’s unemployment figures yet. But there was an interesting chart in the Audit Commission report - also out today - on how councils are faring in the recession.

For all the talk of the public sector cutting jobs and sharing the general pain, the figures seem to show a rather different story.

The chart on page 19 (based on ONS figures) shows a fall in employment of about 210,000 in manufacturing, 195,000 in distribution and hospitality and 180,000 in finance and business services.

Meanwhile there was a rise of about 170,000 workers in public administration, education and health.

This is likely to fuel the suspicion in some quarters that state-employed workers are cossetted from the downturn; a claim which is bitterly contested by the public sector unions.

The mandarins will not have enjoyed reading Paul Richards’ lively piece in the Times. There’s plenty for the Tories to mull over too. One point he made was particularly striking: Whitehall missed six out of ten of its own targets between 2005 and 2009.

He took the figure from an excellent Institute for Government report that tries to draw some lessons from the weaknesses of the “Public Service Agreements” regime. This chart shows how badly the targets were missed. It’s clear that they were either far too ambitious, or the departments failed to raise their game.

A highlight is the stellar performance of the Cabinet Office, which is responsible for “making government work better”.

According to this chart, the department achieved none of its PSA targets. Even the Ministry of Defence did better.

The man who runs the Local Government Pension Scheme has warned that public sector pensions need radical reform to meet critics who believe there is a growing “pensions apartheid”.

Bob Holloway, who manages the LGPS, is quoted in Public Servant magazine saying radical options must be considered. These could include:

1] increased employee contributions

2] raised retirement ages

3] public service cuts

4] council tax rises

This is radical stuff to come from a senior DCLG official (*although Holloway disputes parts of the article). His other suggestions - speaking at a conference of Whitehall types - included the idea of higher and lower membership bands. This could mean those earning £75,000-plus could have to pay higher contributions.

“The LGPS is under threat, something has to happen - things may even happen before a general election,” he said. “There will need to be something more major than a sticking plaster. Unfortunately, people are refusing to die.”

This is surely going to be one of the major battlegrounds before or after the general election. Philip Hammond has warned that it’s unsustainable for 90 per cent of public sector workers to have final salary schemes while only 5 per cent of private sector workers do. Watch this space.

UPDATE

Here is the government’s response:
“No changes have been proposed. There is an informal consultation going on with scheme administrators to gauge views ahead of the next year’s routine three yearly valuation. The Government will continue to make sure the LGPS remains fair, solvent, protected against risk, and affordable to the taxpayer.”

FURTHER UPDATE

* Holloway is disputing that he said points 3 and 4. And someone else who was at the speech confirms this, telling me that Holloway’s main recommendation was the increase in employee contributions.

Expect several front page headlines on Tuesday morning about HMRC’s plunging tax receipts in 08/09 - laid bare thanks to an NAO report. Astute readers of this column will already know about the £20bn-plus fall in tax take - you read it here - because it was flagged up on Budget day in the red book small print. You’ll notice that the coming year is set to be even worse, according to the Treasury’s own predictions.

The real nasty today was another £10bn-plus of unpleasant news, including £3bn of uncollected tax and £7bn set aside for legal claims by taxpayers. The bulk of the latter - a staggering £4.8bn - stems from a single landmark case concluded early last year over VAT repayments. HMRC admitted today that they have already paid £1.5bn as a result of this “Fleming” test case. That’s an awful lot of helicopters or MRI machines.

Brace yourself for new outrage about the bonuses paid to senior officials in HM Treasury - revealed in its departmental review today.

Sir Nicholas Macpherson, permanent secretary: £10-15,000 (responsible for Whitehall’s entire finances). John Kingman, head of UKFI (responsible for controlling two of Britain’s biggest banks), £15-£20,000. Robert Stheeman, chief exec of the Debt Management Office, £10-15,000 (responsible for all of Britain’s gilt issuance).

Five other Treasury officials picked up bonuses of between “0-£5,000″ and £15-20,000.”

The scandal is how painfully low these payments are when compared to directors of the banks which could have collapsed as a result of government intervention.

£10,000 is the sort of bonus which would be derided on the most useless trading floor of the most titchy investment bank.

From my Notebook column in today’s FT:

Shaun Woodward: Our new secret formula is a great success. The public love it.

Gordon Brown: Higher spending and investment until the end of time.

Ed Balls: Unlike the Tories’ 10 per cent spending cuts.

Alistair Darling: Aren’t they Labour cuts?

Gordon Brown: Not since our rebranding exercise. Now it is the Conservatives who will wrest vital funding from the hands of policemen and lollipop ladies.

Alistair Darling: Surely if we win the general election this will come back to haunt us?

Cabinet ( together ): We won’t.

Shaun Woodward: I still think we need something stronger.

Peter Hain: The Tories will institute compulsory Morris dancing?

Andy Burnham: They will murder the first-born of every household?

Peter Hain: They’ll ban Britain’s got Talent .

Gordon Brown: That’s more like it.

One of the riddles of Gordon Brown’s regime is the exact role played by Shaun Woodward, Northern Ireland secretary. Some sense Woodward’s hand in the crude claim that Labour will increase investment while the Tories will cut spending. After all, he was John Major’s head of press during the - successful - “Labour Tax Bombshell” campaign in 1992.

Is Woodward now a crucial adviser to Brown? Lord Mandelson waspishly told the FT on Monday: “I don’t know. What is the advice being dispensed by Mr Woodward?” The former Tory MP has been regularly tipped in the media for promotion to higher office - wrongly.

Yet Woodward is not short of ambition. Alastair Campbell wrote in his diaries of Woodward’s defection in 1999: “He made clear again, less subtly than before, that he felt he was seen by some in the Tory party as a possible future leader.”

Incidentally, Woodward used to work on That’s Life with Esther Rantzen, who sang a song at his stag party, having gate-crashed it. “Do not in any circumstances ask what I was wearing,” she says. “Although a close friend was a gorilla.”

I ask Rantzen if her old friend was annoyed with her proposal to stand in Labour-held Luton. “It’s really unfortunate because the sleaze is evenly distributed,” she admits.

Sir John Sawers, the UK ambassador to the UN, is to become the new head of the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6. Most of the coverage tomorrow is likely to focus on how unusual it is for an outsider to be appointed chief - or “C” as it is still called. But that’s not the only interesting thing to say about this highly gifted and well respected diplomat. Here’s my own little CX report on the new “C” (we, of course, apply all the usual intelligence caveats).

1) His nickname in the Foreign Office was “Jonny Blue Eyes”. He was a popular chap.

2) Whereas his predecessor distinguished himself in the Cold War, Sawers has seen the face of a hot conflict. He spent his early career in Syria while the war in Lebanon was at its most intense. I understand it involved dodging bombs on the Beruit-Damascus highway. SIS said he would be “rejoining” the service but declined to say when he left. It is possible his short career was more Fleming than le Carré.

3) Sawers served as private secretary to Douglas Hurd through a defining period of British foreign policy. The Srebrenica massacre (which started three days after Hurd left) and the UK’s relatively timid response in Bosnia had a profound effect on the diplomats involved. Many emerged as stronger advocates of humanitarian intervention. This outlook would certainly have helped Sawers when he acted as one of Tony Blair’s main foreign policy aides.