Spending on public services is no laughing matter

18 March 2008

Times Public Agenda

STABILITY, blah... alcohol duty, yawn... challenges of the future... bleurgh.

Alistair Darling's 50- minute sleep-inducing masterclass, also known as the Budget, lulled everyone into a slumber deep enough to divert attention away from a more lively debate on the state of the public sector - much of which was highly critical of the Government's handling of the public purse.

According to A Lost Decade (March 10), a report by the think-tank Reform, the Government has failed to deliver on its promises to transform public services and increase UK productivity.

"Spending on public services has been a flash flood rather than the planned irrigation that was needed,” it says.

Sir Clive Booth says that being accused of showing favouritism to the Labour Party goes with the territory in his job

“While many countries have taken advantage of benign global economic conditions over the [past] ten years to reduce spending and borrowing... the UK has increased spending, deficits and debt.”

The think-tank urges spending restraint over the next three to five years. Professor Nick Bosanquet, consultant director of Reform, says: “The Government is in denial about the real fiscal future.

We need new solutions.” Not everyone is as downbeat. Darling found some solace, perhaps not surprisingly, from his colleagues at the Treasury, which published a report last week with a title so desperately dull that it could have been coined by the Chancellor himself.

2004 Spending Review: Efficiency Progress to December 2007 refers to one of the Government's most controversial plans for the public sector - the Gershon efficiency targets of 2004.

The Gershon Report called for public sector spending to be reduced by £20 billion a year by 2007-08, the Civil Service workforce to be trimmed by 84,000 and for 20,000 public sector posts to be relocated outside London. According to the Treasury report, the targets are largely being achieved.

By the end of last year, annual efficiency gains totalled £23 billion, 90,000 civil service posts had gone and 15,700 staff had been relocated. Local Government Chronicle online reports that councils achieved the public sector's biggest savings, trimming more than £6.7 billion off its budgets against a target of £6.45 billion.

Three Whitehall departments, however, have not reached their targets: the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; the Department for Children, Schools and Families; and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.