By Lucy Phillips
4 March 2010
A senior MP has criticised both Labour and the Conservatives for not being honest about the damage that spending cuts will have on public services.
Labour MP Tony Wright, chair of the Commons public administration select committee, last week accused the government and Opposition of ‘cheating the electorate’.
‘The public want to know what is going to happen to public services over the next five years. We are asking them to vote without being told,’ he said at a PASC hearing on February 25.
He earlier attacked a statement made by the prime minister in the Smarter government white paper published last year. Gordon Brown’s promise not to damage public services despite the country’s ‘inescapable fiscal challenge’ was ‘not sustainable’, Wright said.
‘You cannot take £73bn out of the economy to fill a black hole while not doing any damage to public services, can you?’ he asked Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne, who was giving evidence.
Byrne disagreed with Wright’s repeated charges. ‘There will be a degree of pain but it does not damage our ability to deliver public services,’ he said.
Wright insisted that damage to public services was inevitable, particularly as experts at the hearing had argued that the fiscal squeeze was ‘on a scale not seen in modern times’. Referring to an article in Public Finance, Wright said the government was denying the impact of ‘big cuts’ on departmental spending. The respected Institute for Fiscal Studies had forecast these could be around 13%.
But Byrne said the IFS was making a number of ‘simplifying assumptions’. The Treasury expected lower unemployment than the economists predicted, adding up to savings of £10bn by 2014.
While conceding that ‘there may be some things we have to stop’, Byrne said savings could mainly be achieved through cutting spend on external consultants, marketing and back-office functions. Further savings, through greater use of shared services and moving more jobs out of central London, would be unveiled in the Budget, he said.
4 March 2010
A senior MP has criticised both Labour and the Conservatives for not being honest about the damage that spending cuts will have on public services.
Labour MP Tony Wright, chair of the Commons public administration select committee, last week accused the government and Opposition of ‘cheating the electorate’.
‘The public want to know what is going to happen to public services over the next five years. We are asking them to vote without being told,’ he said at a PASC hearing on February 25.
He earlier attacked a statement made by the prime minister in the Smarter government white paper published last year. Gordon Brown’s promise not to damage public services despite the country’s ‘inescapable fiscal challenge’ was ‘not sustainable’, Wright said.
‘You cannot take £73bn out of the economy to fill a black hole while not doing any damage to public services, can you?’ he asked Chief Secretary to the Treasury Liam Byrne, who was giving evidence.
Byrne disagreed with Wright’s repeated charges. ‘There will be a degree of pain but it does not damage our ability to deliver public services,’ he said.
Wright insisted that damage to public services was inevitable, particularly as experts at the hearing had argued that the fiscal squeeze was ‘on a scale not seen in modern times’. Referring to an article in Public Finance, Wright said the government was denying the impact of ‘big cuts’ on departmental spending. The respected Institute for Fiscal Studies had forecast these could be around 13%.
But Byrne said the IFS was making a number of ‘simplifying assumptions’. The Treasury expected lower unemployment than the economists predicted, adding up to savings of £10bn by 2014.
While conceding that ‘there may be some things we have to stop’, Byrne said savings could mainly be achieved through cutting spend on external consultants, marketing and back-office functions. Further savings, through greater use of shared services and moving more jobs out of central London, would be unveiled in the Budget, he said.
