Matthew Norman: Parsimony, Topshop style

While it's fine to sit on an invoice from the manufacturer of opaque tights, the state can hardly be seen to send suppliers into receivership by staunching their cash flow

In one of those instances of Jungian synchronicity that make life almost worth living, the Government chose the day that Philip Green published his report on its own wastefulness to release George Michael from stir. They could have let George out on Sunday or Tuesday. But no, some mischievous imp in the Prison Service alighted on Monday as the ideal release date for the Snappy Snaps ram-raider, thereby reminding us of Sir Philip's 55th birthday party.

That celebration of his half century – I know that looks like a howler; what you need to understand is that Greeny used his monolithic purchasing power to haggle 10 per cent off his age – came in March 2007. With the same rigour he has unleashed on the cost of ink cartridges in departments of state, Sir Philip slashed the bill to an estimated £6m. How you fly 200 chums off to the Maldives for five days in a spa resort for the price of one Bionic Man, I've no idea. But Sir P has the technology, hence the wholesale fee of £750,000 to George Michael to sing a few songs. What he paid the warm-up acts isn't known, but it can't have cost more than a hundred grand for Roberta Flack.

Three-and-a-half years on, the Topshop billionaire is killing us softly with his words about profligacy. That his report coincides with the multimillionaire investment banker David Freud lecturing on the need to drive 500,000 people off incapacity benefits suggests that one economy drive the Government could use concerns its splurging of political capital. This vista of the obscenely rich penny-pinching for the rest of us will damage the Prime Minister soon enough if he doesn't stop it at once. Do-as-I-sayism on this scale is not a handsome vista. You may, for example, discern a tiny credibility gap in Sir Philip's taste in hotel accommodation. "Government uses 400,000 room nights in London each year at a cost of £38m," reveals Michael Winner's annual Christmas companion at the fleapit Sandy Lane on Barbados. "Highest price per night: £117. Lowest price per night: £77. Differential: 34 per cent."

On reflection, perhaps it's unfair to taunt Sir Philip for hypocrisy here. Maybe he isn't suggesting that £77 is ample for a London hotel room (although in fact it is, as long as you're content to sleep on straw); but rather that everyone should be accommodated at the higher rate of £117 (youth hostel in Ongar; whirlpool bath an optional extra). Judging by his report, after all, he could be one of the few surviving Marxists in public life, and thus an advocate of the theory that nothing is too good for workers.

Until Monday, Sir P was more widely viewed as a classic Thatcherite free marketer, and there is something of the old haddock's reduction of the national economy to a thrifty housewife's ledger in his wish to apply retailing practices to the running of Whitehall. His notion that the Government could save fortunes by delaying payments to contractors seems a touch simplistic. While it's fine for Topshop to sit on an invoice from the manufacturer of opaque tights, the state can hardly be seen to send suppliers into receivership by staunching their cash flow.

It is also difficult to see how equalising the cost of a cup of coffee in staff canteens – "Highest price: £1.45. Lowest price: £0.90. Differential: 38 per cent" – would contribute vastly to the potential savings of £20bn-£25bn the report supposedly identifies. If every civil servant now paying 90p coughed up an extra 11 shillings per low-fat latte, my detailed calculations show that this would permit three DVLA staff marooned in town by the cancellation of the last train to Swansea to upgrade from a £77 hotel room to one at £117.

Not that Sir Phil wouldn't want that level of luxury for all if he is the Marxist suggested by the plea at the core of his report... one for a central command structure of a type seldom seen in government since the fall of the Berlin Wall. While Mr Cameron is demanding decentralisation in the cause of shrinking the state, Sir Philip goes the other way. "Government acts as a series of independent departments rather than as one organisation," is one complaint. "There hasn't been a mandate for centralised procurement" runs another.

This is the language of the 1970s Politburo, and there were plenty of anomalies there between public adherence to the demands of parsimony and private indulgence. Mr Brezhnev and his Supreme Soviet mates may not have spent £4m on their sons' barmitzvahs on the French Riviera, replete with Andrea Bocelli on lead vocals. But like Sir P's guests, they had all the Beluga they could eat, not to mention charming dachas in the Black Sea resort of Sochi (the Warsaw Pact's answer to the Maldives).

Assuming for a moment, however, that Sir P isn't a Communist sleeper, his Efficiency Review is recognisably a Topshop product. This is a cheap, mass market version of someone else's original. Wading through the stuff about poorly negotiated IT contracts and unused property cock-ups, the sense of déjà vu is overpowering. Much of what he identifies as wasteful was identified as wasteful by the National Audit Office, and ignored by a government to which its autocratic centralist solutions seemed too dangerously out of step with a small-is-beautiful message.

Everyone knows that government, by its vast and sprawling and fantastically confused nature, will be less efficient than a privately owned business whose major shareholder is domiciled in Monaco to avoid paying tax. But the report is not merely a resounding statement of the bleeding obvious. It is so vague (nowhere does he specify which departments are wasting what) as to be meaningless.

Just as its author betrays himself as a naïf when straying into the territory of the professional politician, so David Cameron makes himself look foolish by invading Sir P's ground. For hiring Sir P was nothing more than window-dressing, and that is one thing Sir P understands far better than the Prime Minister.

Running a country, on the other hand, is more demanding than enticing punters into an Oxford Street store, or even paring the costs of a private party to the bone, and probably best left to those aware of the complexities.