Lib Dems appeal to public sector workers on savings

Mr Clegg said teachers, nurses and social workers were best placed to see where cash was being wasted.

He also outlined radical plans to force hospitals to reduce the cost of operations to match the lowest tariff charged in the country.

Mr Clegg said: "Hard-working nurses and teachers tell me how frustrated they are by the money which is being wasted on needless paperwork, administration and computer systems that don't work.

"David Cameron and Gordon Brown are having a sterile debate about the size of the total Whitehall budget.

"But they're asking the wrong question: we first need to find out if money is being spent on the right things.

"It can't be right that billions of pounds are being spent on NHS computer systems which don't work, yet basic help for people with serious mental health conditions is still lacking because of a shortage of money.

"The people who are best placed to tell us where money is not being well spent are the teachers, nurses, social workers and other public servants who work so hard day and night on our behalf."

Ideas can be submitted to the "asking people in the know" project at www.nickclegg.com/intheknow.

Mr Clegg said: "Politicians should stop talking over the heads of public servants. We need to listen to the people in the know on how we can better run public services, making sure that every penny of taxpayers' money is well spent.

"That's what 'asking people in the know' is all about."

In an interview with The Guardian, Mr Clegg set out his proposals for reducing the cost of operations, which he claimed would save £2 billion a year.

He said: "It is a very specific but rather radical idea, of saying that all hospital tariffs under the 'payment by results' system should match the most efficient tariffs in the hospital system."

Mr Clegg said under the current system hospital trusts are effectively operating as a monopoly and the primary care trusts which commission treatment "have got very little leverage".

He acknowledged the plan would be controversial because some hospitals would claim they were unable to compete with those performing many more operations.

The most "cost-effective tariff" which guaranteed clinical standards would be used as the benchmark, he said.

The savings would be directed to under-funded "Cinderella services" in other areas of the NHS.