Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable has today said the "time for generalities is over" and set out £14bn of spending cuts in a paper for the Reform think tank.
They are listed below:
- Overall freeze in public sector pay (saving £2.4 billion a year) including a 25% reduction in the total pay bill of staff earning over £100,000 and an end to bonuses for the civil service (saving £200 million a year).
- Tapering the family element of the tax credit – saving £1.35 billion.
- Higher pension contributions from public sector workers and later retirement ages.
- Scrapping major IT systems including the ID card scheme (£5 billion over 10 years), Contactpoint (£200 million over 5 years), the NHS IT scheme (£250 million over the next 5 years) and the proposed “super database” (£6 billion).
- Curbing “industrial policy” by scrapping Regional Development Agencies (£2.3 billion annually) and EGCD subsidies (£100 million annually) and reducing (by at least half) the Train to Gain and Skills Councils budgets (£990 million together a year).
- Scrapping Strategic Health Authorities (£200 million a year) and NHS tariff reform with a view to saving around £2 billion a year.
- Scrapping quangos, saving around £600 million a year.
- Scrapping the Eurofighter and Tranche 3 (£5 billion over 6 years), the A400M (total cost £22 billion), Nimrod MRA4, the Defence Training Review contract (£13 billion over 25 years) and the Trident submarine successor (£70 billion over 25 years).
- Public sector asset sales including some parts of the Highways Agency (land value of £80 billion) and intangibles such as spectrum, landing rights and emissions trading.
