Total Politics speaks to Mike Freer, the Conservative MP for Finchley and Golders Green. He talks about moving on from being a councillor, the coalition’s efficiency drive and where the axe should fall on councils.

How're you finding being a Member of Parliament?

The role is obviously fundamentally different from being a local councillor and being leader of the council. The issues raised by residents are very wide ranging and less locally focused. Having spent years in local government, handling moans and groans from residents because their formal complaint hadn't been dealt with by the chief executive, I was taken aback when one resident shouted at me "you're useless" because his complaint had been handled by the chief executive and not a junior council officer. Go figure.

What are your ambitions for the next Parliament?

I want to utilise my experience as leader of one of the UK's largest councils, especially if an opportunity arises to address the inequitable equalisation formula of local government funding, and also to ensure that Finchley and Golders Green gets a fair deal from the government and the mayor especially in the areas of education, health and transport.

As a former council leader, is Eric Pickles going in the right direction with his reforms of councils?

Eric has got off to a cracking start and is driving through savings he just has to follow where the money went during the previous government. Some councils were generously funded and have large reserves. Eric has to be forensic in reducing the CLG budget rather than across the board cuts.

In your experience, where would savings be most easily found in local government?

Eric should follow the money. Which councils in the past few years have had generous settlements and those who've had good settlements but haven't been able to spend it? Look for those with large balances and reserves. The obvious areas to look at are procurement, back office finance teams and general support functions, de-layering management and offices. Walk down any high street and see how many public bodies have under-utilised offices that could be shared and surplus ones sold off. Also, topically, the amount councils spend to support full-time union officials. The big win is to merge the public sector bodies together, one CE, one finance/HR/Legal/payroll etc. Not only are management costs stripped off, but all the inter-organisation strategy boards can be abolished.