Later this morning George Osborne and Boris Johnson will be addressing the cost of living in London. They have chosen a good day to do so. A report in this morning's Times notes that "British workers will be taking home an extra £44 a month on average after this year’s pay rises, but families are facing an increase of £148 a month in essential living costs". Tory Treasury spokesman Philip Hammond tells the Daily Mail that "Gordon Brown's legacy to Britain's hard-working families is falling take-home pay, soaring food and fuel costs." All true Mr Hammond but what are you going to do about it?
As long as our party is shackled to Labour's spending plans we have very little room to offer some relief to Britain's hard-pressed families. It is true that the public sector is facing a tight spending settlement but that settlement comes after years of largesse and it is nowhere near as tight as the settlement facing poorer British families on fixed or falling incomes. Who is on their side? Conservative MP Michael Fallon is. Yesterday, over at The Spectator, he recognised that "proper spending control is the key to fairer, lower taxes". On his blog John Redwood outlines steps necessary for that control. Mr Redwood calls for a curtailment of government IT projects, a civil service recruitment freeze and a war on absenteeism in the public sector. Edward Leigh understands, too. He describes huge productivity failures in the NHS and calls for the spending splurge to end and for a new emphasis on efficiency.
The back of the envelope calculation below (click the graphic to enlarge it for easier reading) outlines how the kind of civil service recruitment freeze suggested by John Redwood could save about £6bn a year by its third year of operation...
Some follow up bullet points:
- This freeze is not a full freeze but a flexible freeze. It allows about 20% replacement so recruitment of specialist staff remains possible. It could run for as long as the government deemed necessary but three years would seem sensible.
- It applies only to the core civil service - not to frontline doctors, teachers and policeman etc although think tanks like Reform believe that savings are possible here, too.
- Noone would lose their jobs through compulsory redundancy. This policy is about non-replacement of leavers.
- The Government is shedding some civil servants which might make the £2bn figure harder to achieve. The £2bn figure does not include local government or quangoes, however. It is not an unreasonable estimate of possible savings.
- Public sector employment has mushroomed in recent years. Cutbacks to the supplicant state are long overdue.
ConservativeHome suggests that savings should contribute equally to two aims: (1) To help pay for the slower growth in the size of the state and (2) A £3bn boost to the defence budget by the freeze's third year of operation.
Defence should be the first duty of any government. It is the number one expenditure priority of Tory members. And yet, every new day brings more evidence of neglect by this government. Today's Sun notes that thirty-five UK soldiers have died for want of proper equipment. Its Sun Says column describes the situation as "scandalous".
Root-and-branch overhaul of procurement projects and more burden-sharing by NATO allies are also necessary but £3bn extra in the defence budget should be part of a Conservative commitment to our nation's armed forces.
Related link: Cameron launches Military Covenant Commission.
Very sensible suggestion.
Posted by: Sammy Finn | March 10, 2008 at 09:42
I'm not saying there aren't efficiency savings to be made but spending 3 billion *more* on defence? Where is the threat? Invasion from France? ;)
Seriously, what are we defending and against whom?
Posted by: comstock | March 10, 2008 at 09:55
Don't be so crass Comstock.
Posted by: Malcolm Dunn | March 10, 2008 at 10:02
Some good points however we need to assess the situation as it can be the case that more people leave in depts where we are already having staffing problems. Certainly this semes to be the case in parts of local govt. Also it doesn't really address the real issues which are about how do you re-engineer the civil service so that it is leaner and delivers better services. Three years of freeze without also addressing this could lead to poorer services as morale drops and no-one knows where depts are going. I think the public are looking for more than this so if a sensible freeze was combined with re-engineering and localism then we could see real results from the 3rd year onwards.
Posted by: Matt Wright | March 10, 2008 at 10:13
"Don't be so crass Comstock."
Perfectly reasonable question, in my eyes- if we are going to spend another 3 billion defending something, hadn't we better decide what 'it' is and who is threatning it?
Posted by: comstock | March 10, 2008 at 10:19
Where to begin comstock?!
We should always have a strong military capacity as we can never know where threats might come from. An army can't be magically produced if an unexpected threat suddenly emerges.
We need military to deal with rogue states that threaten us in the way Taliban-controlled Afghanistan harboured al-Qaeda.
We need military for humanitarian interventions and peacekeeping.
We need military to anticapte the threats to energy supply as described by Liam Fox.
Need I go on?
Posted by: Editor | March 10, 2008 at 11:12
Where does this £40,000 average come from, out of interest?
Regardless, the other side of the equation is that a number of these hard working families require the use of publically funded services, and will therefore suffer if they are subjected to cuts. They may have some extra money due to less taxes being levied, but the cost to them may in the end be higher. That's the problem which you seem to recognise in the case of military spending, but not in any other area.
Posted by: David | March 10, 2008 at 11:25
You have no clue what's going on in the core civil service do you?
Posted by: Adam in London | March 10, 2008 at 11:40
Attempting to take those points in turn
We need military to deal with rogue states that threaten us in the way Taliban-controlled Afghanistan harboured al-Qaeda.
The first one is the easiest to dismiss. I don't recall Afghanistan ever attacking us or even threatening to do so.
We need military for humanitarian interventions and peacekeeping.
OK, point taken. I'm not advocating complete withdrawal from a role in the world. But where would, for example, Trident fit into this? Or Eurofighter? Plenty of spaces for cuts here if we need more money for humanitarian things like distributing aid.
We need military to anticapte the threats to energy supply as described by Liam Fox.
I take it you mean things like this http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article2076647.ece
Now you see 3 billion is a lot of money. How far would it go towards making us energy self sufficent? Can we reopen coal mines, or build nuclear power plants, or develop better biofuels? With that type of money, yes IMHO.
Posted by: comstock | March 10, 2008 at 12:26
This kind of thing actually makes me depressed with politics - what exactly do you think these civil servants are doing? Nothing? How is the civil service meant to operate when it can't hire people to replace people who've just left? Who's going to do their work?
This idea is frankly crass. You can't make money out of thin air. Sacking a load of government workers will bite you back when vital work isn't done. And I know what people will come back with on this one - "oh but they're not doing any work" etc. Well, that's rubbish - they are. Civil servants don't just sit around and do nothing all day.
Seriously, this idea is nonsense. If it would be this easy to create money for "taxpayers and the defence budget" then it would already have been done. Rather than finding ways of making money out of thin air, try to do REAL cuts in government spending - such as halving welfare payouts or stop giving subsidies to a whole raft of institutions.
I am a Conservative, but really this kind of policy idea making "on the back of an envelope" - literally! - is terrible. We should be the party of real decisions, real policy and reality.
Posted by: David Jones | March 10, 2008 at 12:27
I agree with comstock.
One of the dangers of spending too much on defence is that politicians are too eager to get involved in the wrong conflicts. Much better, in my opinion, to have a good hard look at military priorities and then match the spending to that need.
Just how many aircraft carriers and fighter jets do you need to provide humanitarian aid?
Conversely, how many would you need to invade Saudi Arabia? There's no limit to the amount the war mongers would want to spend.
Posted by: Stephen Yeo | March 10, 2008 at 12:38
So the party goes into the election promising to increase defence spending before that of education, health and the police. That will win the party lots of votes, I think not!
Posted by: Jack Stone | March 10, 2008 at 13:25
Sometimes the debates in here gets as depressing as the weather!
Darling needs to reinvent prudence, reduce the size of the state, reign in all spending, start to repay the national debt, take millions of low paid families out of the taxation system, and reduce CGT to help small businesses.
Posted by: Curly | March 10, 2008 at 13:41
“ …"oh but they're not doing any work" etc. Well, that's rubbish - they are. Civil servants don't just sit around and do nothing all day.” – David Jones.
Unfortunately, that is also part of the problem. The things that they ARE doing are costing us dear and damaging the country. Some of it is the pet projects of politicians and some of it is their own creation, but little of anything a public sector worker does is of any use to the public.
Posted by: David Bodden | March 10, 2008 at 13:46
We should always have a strong military capacity as we can never know where threats might come from. An army can't be magically produced if an unexpected threat suddenly emerges.
IMHO voters care far more about schools, hospitals, prisons and police than about about a "strong military capacity" for some ill-defined use...
After Tony Blair's Iraq adventure it will take years to regain the public's trust for military ops...
ToryJim
Posted by: ToryJim | March 10, 2008 at 14:45
Just saying we should spend X amount of money on something is totally from the ZanuLabour handbook.
David Cameron rightly said the other day that defense/security funding should fit our requirememnts. Rather than defense having to fit the amount of money it is granted.
Posted by: dave's primrose singers | March 10, 2008 at 15:25
"IMHO voters care far more about schools, hospitals, prisons and police than about about a "strong military capacity" for some ill-defined use..."
Perhaps so. But I've no desire to see our servicemen dying just because we weren't prepared to spend enough on their equipment - regardless of whether the public have.
Posted by: Sean Fear | March 10, 2008 at 16:02
>I don't recall Afghanistan ever attacking us or even threatening to do so.<
I do recall 200-300 British people dying in the 9/11 attacks, which were sponsored by al-qaeda, which was in charge of one of the armies of Afganistan.
Posted by: Andrew Lilico | March 10, 2008 at 16:37
I am stunned by the utterly half witted posts on this thread regarding defence expenditure.How much evidence do you need that troops have died because of their lack of equipment or that that the army is understrength because of the incompetent and immoral behaviour of bastards like Geoff Hoon and Des Browne?
You may disagree with the war mongering of a PM like Tony Blair (I certainly do in the case of Iraq) but British history is littered with examples of Britain having to fight wars which we have been unprepared for.Do you seriously think we should learn no lessons from the past?
Posted by: Malcolm Dunn | March 10, 2008 at 16:42
Malcolm,
I think these posts are just intended to annoy.
Posted by: Sean Fear | March 10, 2008 at 16:57
Forgive me for being a little bit sour but, until you can come up with some sensible suggestions for reducing the ill-directed spending on defence procurement, giving the Armed Forces and extra £3 billion (less than 10 percent of its current annual expenditure) is not going to improve things and could make it worse.
What you have to realise is that the Armed Forces have an unlimited capacity for buying the wrong or overly expensive equipment. But the really important thing is that the through-life cost of equipment is very much higher than its procurement cost. Thus, the wrong equipment continues to exert a drag on the budget throughout its life (to say nothing of the opportunity costs).
If you want one small example, look to the purchase of six ex-Danish Merlin helicopters to beef up the operation in Afghanistan. The announcement was made on 30 March LAST YEAR and, despite total costs now runing to £180 million (i.e., £30 million each) - you read it here first - the aircraft are still not in service.
If the Conservatives are to be credible on defence policy, therefore, they cannot just keep repeating the sterile mantra of "more expenditure" when the NHS provides the definitive evidence that more money does not necessarily mean better capability.
They MUST start identifying the very specific shorcomings in equipment and expenditure wastage and come up with sensible alternatives.
Posted by: Richard North | March 10, 2008 at 19:28
As long as our party is shackled to Labour's spending plans..
Oh come on, Blairites and Cameroons are exactly the same beast. The party is not shackled, it is openly embracing New Labour ideas.
After 10 years of resisting pressure from the unions to impose a tax on nom-doms, it was George Osborne who provided Brown with the cover to do so!
The same on state funding, etc etc.
I hope you get your wish and get elected, as at least a change of personnel will provide some minor, temporary improvement, but let's not all pretend that a Cameron government is going to look in any way different from what we have endured over the past 10 years.
Posted by: Chad Noble | March 10, 2008 at 20:21
I thought I heard that George Osborne would squeeze benefits, while increasing funding on such things as law & order and defence? If so, surely more in line with the way the state should be prioritising the use taxpayers money.
Totally agree with the Editor (1112) but it is perhaps surprising he has to on this site state is such a manner the obvious with respect to the need for defence spending!
Posted by: Philip | March 10, 2008 at 22:42
Too many typos! This reads better:
I thought I heard that George Osborne would squeeze benefits, while increasing funding on such things as law & order and defence? If so, surely more in line with the way the state should be prioritising the use of taxpayers money.
Totally agree with the Editor (1112), but it is perhaps surprising he has to, on this site, state in such a manner the obvious with respect to the need for defence spending!
Posted by: Philip | March 10, 2008 at 22:48
Clearing out deadwood and slimming down is fine as far as it goes.
And David Jones @1227 who pooh-poohed the idea that civil servants are totally committed to their work obviously has forgotten the video of Defra staff up in the North East, responsible for delaying payments to farmers for up to a year, filmed naked and up to no good on the tops of filing cabinets. And who lost all those computers, and personal details disks? Why, civil servants, of course.
Tomorrow's budget speech will start with half-truths and bromides and go on to headline seeking 'spin-oriented' tweaks. These will lard Darling’s speech, but it is clear - Government finances are in deep crisis because of total mismanagement.
So what is there to hope for from the Tories.? The answer, judging by Hammond, is “Precious little”. There seems to be no fire in the party leaders' bellies. The government has led us here by reckless extravagance and what do the Tories offer? - To match goverment spending.
There seems a death wish in the Cameron camp these days . Cameron himself is totally silent on how he will implement his pledge over the EU Treaty of which he has said “We will not let it rest there? " So what will he do? He will talk about anything else but that. He is keen on having women as a third of his ministers - Why a third? Why not a half? Or 42,5%? Or 30%?. He can witter on about trivia but leaves a vacuum at the top of the party on the critical issues including that of the very future of our nation
No wonder the Populus poll today is - to put it mildly - dreadful.
Wake up, for heaven's sake!
Posted by: christina speight | March 11, 2008 at 11:29
The above given post provides us with very good insight related to recruitment freeze. Hmmm... Interesting point of view. Ought to be Dugg.
Posted by: Recruitment Software | August 19, 2009 at 13:12