David Cameron will today promise to “turn government on its head” and make every Whitehall department publicly accountable against published milestones for what they want to achieve.

The Prime Minister will say he wants to change the way the country is run so public services are geared towards their users, rather than centrally imposed targets and bureaucrats.

As part of that, departments will from today begin publishing “structural reform plans” setting out their top priorities and key milestones so that voters can measure their performance.

The first to do so will be the Department for Education and the Department for Communities and Local Government.

In a speech to civil servants at a conference in London, Mr Cameron will say that transparency and competition would help improve choice.

He will say that “radical reform” is needed to raise standards of services at a time when public spending is being slashed.

“We need to completely change the way this country is run,” he will say.

The Prime Minister will accuse the former Labour government of creating a system of “bureaucratic accountability” in which everything was inspected centrally, usually against targets.

“We want to replace the old system of bureaucratic accountability with a new system of democratic accountability - accountability to the people, not the government machine,” he will say. “We want to turn government on its head, taking power away from Whitehall and putting it into the hands of people and communities.

“We want to give people the power to improve our country and public services, through transparency, local democratic control, competition and choice.”

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