Council park gardens should be tidied by volunteers, charges levied on visa application appeals, and criminal bureau checks in the NHS streamlined, David Cameron suggested today as he continued his roadshow designed to engage the public in his plans to slash the deficit.
Ministers will ask the public to rate some of the approved ideas on a website next week.
The prime minister urged people not to view 5%-a-year cuts (amounting to 25% over the parliament) as drastic reductions. But his roadshow was buffeted after he was accused by Labour of making a diplomatic gaffe when, during a question and answer session, he referred to "the fact that Iran has got a nuclear weapon".
Downing Street said Cameron had mis-spoken and had meant to say the Iranian government was seeking a nuclear weapon. The apparent blunder came as he explained why he wanted Turkey to join the EU.
Accusing the prime minister of a diplomatic gaffe over Iran, the shadow Europe minister, Chris Bryant, said Cameron had "two right feet – both of them permanently planted in his mouth".
Cameron also had to repeatedly apologise to angry pensioner Kathy Finn after she accused him of "denigrating his own country" by having suggested in America a fortnight ago that Britain had been the junior partner against the Nazis in 1940 when, in reality, it had stood alone.
A contrite Cameron said he had meant to say "the 1940s", adding that 1940 was the most glorious moment in 1,000 years of British history. "There was no senior partner. We were on our own in 1940 ... You are absolutely right and I was absolutely wrong."
The PM said: "There were a few Polish pilots, there were a few French pilots, [but] on the whole it was Britain standing completely alone against Nazi Germany. It is the proudest moment of our history and we should be incredibly proud of the fact that we stood alone against Hitler."
Cameron was speaking at a PM Direct event in Hove Town Hall – coincidentally, the place where French and British political and military leaders had met in secret in 1939 to plan a response to the Nazi advance.
As he continued his efforts to get the public behind his plans to slim down the state, Cameron revealed that nearly 100,000 people (60,000 of them public sector workers) had put forward money-saving ideas to a Treasury website.
Highlighting two ideas, he pointed out that health service workers had to get a new criminal records check every time they went to a different hospital.
"Secondly, someone working in the immigration system said that when people appeal against a visa decision, even though that appeal might cost £10,000 pounds, that appeal is entirely free," he said. "That is something we can change."
He also proposed merging police force use of computers, frogmen, helicopters and other assets, and revealed he was against implementing the EU agency workers directive.
"In terms of the rights of agency workers, I think we have to look at this very carefully. Sometimes you find if you pile on extra rights and obligations, you just end up with fewer people in jobs," he said. "I think we have got to ask ourselves a pretty simple question: if we want more jobs, are we making it easier or more difficult to employ someone?"
The shadow treasury minister, Angela Eagle, has claimed many of the suggestions on the website are drivel: "Sterilising the poor, reopening the workhouses, asking single parents who can't finance their children to terminate the pregnancy, benefit claimants to work in sweatshops and immigrants to be moved out of cities".