Spending Review - September 2010

With just weeks to go  until the announcement of the outcome of the comprehensive spending review, my postbag is already under pressure from special pleading on behalf of various interests and lobbies. With only a very few exceptions,  the letter writers accept the overriding  economic need to cut the deficit and restore healthy  government finances, but they then go on to point out how vital it is that their own special interest be spared from any cuts. Perhaps the best recent headline grabbing example of this special pleading was the Police Federation announcing a ‘Christmas for Criminals’ consequent upon  feared reductions in police numbers.

I am afraid that I give these letters short shrift: I reply saying simply that the country has run out of money and that, whatever it is they are pleading on behalf of, it will just  have to manage with less.

It is a strange logic however, which automatically translates a speculative reduction in a budget directly into a specific reduction in the front line service, be it fewer policemen or whatever.
This is a logic that appears to be exclusive to the public sector. In the private sector successful enterprises  strive continuously  to cut costs and become more efficient.  They do so in order to improve the service that they sell and not to diminish it.

Do we really believe that the public sector is so well run and so efficient that there are no savings to be had without directly cutting the core service to the public?

Clearly, people don’t believe that because they write to me suggesting savings and improved ways of doing things all the time. The public sector mindset has to change and ask fundamental questions about the way things are done if we are to get more out of less. It can be done: the New York Police Department cut crime by 30% at a time when its own budget was cut by 10%.  If they can do it in New York, we can do it here.