Britannia Radio

The shape of things to come is emerging not necessarily  in all the particulars here  but this is the direction and something approaching the scale.  

This leaves Brown-Darling like a couple of excited squirrels getting worked up out on a limb.  They haven’t engaged in the discusiion constructively.  

Christina

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FINANCIAL TIMES 11.9.09

Tories focus on cuts to reduce deficit

By Jean Eaglesham, Chief Political Correspondent

Spending cuts, rather than tax rises, would be the main focus of efforts to reduce the budget deficit under a Conservative government, George Osborne said on Thursday.

The shadow chancellor also pledged to set out plans before the election for a cull of civil servants on a scale that would “pleasantly surprise” taxpayers.

Business attacked a Tory decision to protect the health budget from spending cuts, saying it ran counter to the need to involve the whole public sector in the search for efficiency savings and reduced expenditure.

“We need to look at the NHS and see what could be saved without hurting the essential services,”Miles Templeman, director-general of the Institute of Directors, told the Financial Times.

Mr Osborne signalled that he would not bow to intensifying pressure from the right of his party to revisit a commitment to increase NHS spending – important to David Cameron’s modernising drive to reassure voters he could be trusted with public services.

“I don’t for a second regret protecting the health service and saying it’s going to get a real-terms increase,” the shadow chancellor told a London event. But he said this was “not a blank cheque – it comes alongside reform”.

The Institute of Directors will seek on Friday to inject hard numbers into the debate about public finance. In a joint report with the Taxpayers’ Alliance pressure group, the institute will set out proposals to cut £50bn a year from public spending. The report’s recommendations include a one-year freeze on the basic state pension; a one-year pay freeze across the public sector, apart from troops serving in conflict zones; and abolition of child benefit.

Mr Templeman called on both parties to come clean about plans for spending cuts, to ensure that whichever party won the general election had a mandate to enact the required painful austerity measures.

“Only if it’s a very open debate will we get the kind of savings that we need,” he said.

The Tories on Thursday pledged “specific numbers” before the general election on their intention to cut the Whitehall head count. Mr Osborne declined to be drawn about how many civil service jobs might go, but forecasted: “The taxpayer will be pleasantly surprised with the scale of our ambition. I’ve not ruled out tax increases. But, - big ‘but’ -, I’m clear that the principal way of dealing with this deficit should be spending control.

“People should not be overtaxed because a Labour government overspent . . . the focus of my attention and the focus of our work is on spending restraint.”

In a speech to Tory councillors in London, Mr Osborne said a Conservative government would “have much to learn” from how Tory-run councils already deal with constraints.

“When it comes to rooting out waste and cutting costs, or improving services [by] innovative new policies, Conservative councils are showing it can be done.”

The Labour party counter-attacked, saying: “When the Tories say more for less they mean more for the wealthiest few – but less for the many.”

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GUARDIAN 11.9.09

Child benefits in Tory lobbyists' £50bn spending-cut plan

• Patrick Wintour, political editor

Pressure on parties to spell out specific spending cuts will grow tomorrow when two rightwing pressure groups set out plans for £50bn in cuts, insisting the proposals are practical and will not hurt vital services.

The Taxpayers' Alliance and the Institute of Directors propose abolishing Surestart and child benefit, and imposing a one-year freeze on the basic state pension and on all public-sector pay except for the army.

Both groups hold sway  [=”have influence” -cs] inside the Conservative party and the proposals will be welcomed by shadow ministers eager to have outriders creating a climate of respectability around big cuts.

The Tory party did not endorse any proposals in the joint report, and the Tory-led Local Government Association responded by saying it was already slashing jobs and costs. The authors concede that some of their proposals are controversial.

The Tories and Labour both this week said they would cut the public-sector deficit.

 The joint report proposes £42.5bn of annual savings for 2010-11 and £7.5bn savings in the years thereafter. "Unless fiscal tightening efforts are sufficiently credible, interest rates on government debt could increase to unsustainable levels and sterling could undergo further dramatic falls," it says, also claiming that Britain will have a structural deficit of between 10% and 12% of GDP in the next financial year. The authors say the government cannot afford simply to wait for public service reforms to increase efficiency; the deficit has to be cut now through immediate spending reductions.

The report proposes withdrawal from areas where "the government should not be involved". The plan is for £5.4bn in cuts on schemes labelled "not working" – such as Surestart (a cut of £1.4bn) school building (£2.3bn) and the Eurofighter upgrade (£740m). A freeze in the basic state pension would save £1.4bn and a one-year freeze in the pay of all public-sector workers £6.2bn. Savings of £8.4bn could come from taking welfare from the middle class, including child benefit (although leaving poorer families with child tax credits).

Plans for a £1.6bn cut in "over-extended government" include halving its advertising budget (£270m),abolishing ID cards (£55m) and abolishing the National Health programme for IT (£1.2bn). Other cuts include a 10% drop in non-frontline staff in health and schools (£921m) and a 10% slice from the civil service (£1.2bn).

Matthew Elliott, the chief executive of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "Taxpayers cannot afford to sustain the current rises of spending."