Spending Review Watch

[Hassled]

Depressing BBC list of what's been cut so far here.

There was an scary interesting article in the Guardian yesterday by John Lanchester - he says "Unprotected departments were told to prepare cuts all the way up to a "worst-case" level of 40%. What does that mean? Well, as Rowena Crawford of the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out some time ago, "For the ministry of defence, an 18% cut means something on the scale of no longer employing the army." No spending at all on roads, and closing the majority of courts ? that's the kind of thing we were being asked to envisage.

How alarmist is he being? What are our predictions for what will go post-spending review?

I think the Con Dems are painting an alarming picture, thus when some services aren't cut, or saved, then people will say, 'gosh, that wasn't so bad...'

I also think that there has been a large element of 'expectation setting' going on for some time especially within government departments and the civil servants responsible for the planning. Ask for 25% cuts and suggestions of 10-15% might have been offered. Ask for 40% and they might get the 25% that's really required.

I have no idea what will 'go' post spending review but suspect (& hope) that it will include a huge amount of dead wood before they start excising live tissue.

It's interesting angle, the 'deadwood' point. There haven't exactly been riots on the streets about the Audit Commission going, but my understanding is that it was a successful government agency, so effectively it was privatized. This was a government department whose job it was to find savings and look for efficiency, and presumably the savings will be somehow converted into cash for the shareholders?

Most organisations use external auditors to examing their books so there's a lively, competitive market which, if the contracts are managed correctly, should bring costs down. Companies employed to find cost-savings will have minimum savings built into the contract and probably get a bonus if they exceed them. However, if there are a few people angling to get the job as well, the price tends to come down.

I hope you're right re the "gosh, that wasn't so bad approach" and the deadwood going. I don't know enough to know how much deadwood there actually is - I can see very little in my own area (education).

But even in education, I can identify useful initiatives that look ripe for the chop (apart from what we already know - BECTA, Building Schools etc); Parent Support Advisors, for example. In my county the School Travel Plan - funding for initiatives to get more children walking to school - has already gone.

All organisations have dead-wood, public or private. Private ones are ruthlessly pruning all the time in pursuit of improving profits back to shareholders. Public departments and organisations are not run to make a profit, of course, and we always push for expansion and more budget - never the reverse. One council worker I know described how their team had all their relatively new PCs replaced simply to 'use up the budget', knowing that it couldn't be carried over to the following financial year. That kind of culture is replicated in a lot of areas.

'will' push for expansion rather than 'we'... not a public employee :)

Where was the "Deficit Watch" programme for the BBC?

:o.
Yes, the BBC missed an opportunity with Deficit Watch. Just think of the lost graphics.