During their autumn conference the Tories promised to call to account any public servant being paid more than the Prime Minister's salary and this week Gordon Brown said that organisations squandering public funds on over-generous salaries for officials would be named and shamed.

He has been accused of stealing Dave Cameron's ideas but let's face it, since when did that not happen between the two main parties? It seems to be the case that if it looks like a crowd-pleaser then stick it on the to do list.

And this is definitely a policy which will curry favour among the populace as we are all offended by hearing that our councils and public services are being run by a handful of officers on huge salaries while frontline workers are having their wages reduced and our elected councillors seem to be nothing but puppets on a string.

We want to see the end of tick-box managers there just to delegate, monitor and host endless pointless meetings. Instead we want to see our services being provided by those people trained to do the actual job and we want to see councillors who are able to make decisions for the good of the community.

In his speech on Monday Gordon Brown said: "It cannot be right that taxpayers fund 300 local authority officials who have salaries over £150,000."

Meanwhile the Tories argue that the Labour Government's target-driven approach has emasculated our doctors, social workers and teachers, and that the armies of regulators, auditors and inspectors employed to oversee their work just give us an illusion of excellence which we find sadly lacking when the reality of tragedies such as Baby P hit home.

Whichever party gets our vote in May I can only hope that they stick to their promises and cut out the bureaucracy which is strangling our lives and give back power to the people. It won't be before time.