In the news, Inside Track, October 2010
The bitter pill of spending cuts
Behind the shrouds that cover Whitehall, there is strenuous activity going on called a Comprehensive Spending Review. This is the Coalition Government’s way to show how some £80billion will be taken out of public expenditure over the next four years. Watch for the signals of that activity… was that the Chancellor rapping the Work and Pensions Secretary over the knuckles for suggesting that benefits reform (so desperately needed) might require some upfront investment and might have a rather longer pay back period? We will hear the results later this month
The interesting thing is that the Coalition Government has created a climate which makes most of us recognise that these cuts are inevitable and on the way, the painful medicine we have to take to restore us to longer term health. The question is how can the cuts be delivered in individual spending areas in any way which is palatable politically. The soft underbelly is always capital projects. Who will notice if ambitious road building schemes get put back, or new hospitals or schools not built? Actually, locally quite a lot of people will notice.
And what happens to some of the front line services that have not been exempted, e.g. the police? The watchwords are innovation and efficiency. And certainly the police budgets could be squeezed through more innovative methods of policing and greater efficiency. But that won’t add up to 20-25% of savings. It’s areas like this that would really benefit from a root and branch examination of what we expect of the services in question (in fairness, as the police have been calling for). The same of the defence review.
