Bradford’s got to reduce by £150 million and Sheff is voting today on where £200 million’s gonna go. The days of burning money are over. My council – Kirklees, are so far in the red that they’re having to lay off 25% of staff. I guess everyone’s vulnerable so all savings are gonna have to be borne by one client group or another.

I’m perhaps being a bit optimistic in that Lansley’s review of commissioning within the health service is a way to bypass the ring-fencing of the NHS budget so that greater adaptations can be made to local kiddy & adult health & social care initiatives. Ofcourse, though, that’s probably drivel.

“it’s clear that it’s the most vulnerable who will be footing the bill.”

Regardless of the rights and wrongs of where cuts if any should fall the above phrasing is very irritating and inaccurate. They are not “footing the bill” they are simply receiving a bit less of someone else’s money.

In that list provided, aren’t the services being cut those that were not judged as necessary in care plans? Are the vulnerable that we must protect not those who are judged as vulnerable in exactly those care plans?

This piece reads like the services provided by the council are a right. But if there are people being provided with care which has not been judged necessary by the appropriate systems (social workers in this case), how is that a right. I challenge anyone to define how having your phone rental paid is a right for anyone for example.

@3 – Carephones. You pop a dongle around your grannies neck and if she stumbles or something then she presses it and loads of good stuff happens.

@4 Dick,

Yes. They should also have a designated line, so if Granny is on the phone when she falls she can still use it! You don’t even have to have an existing phoneline. That line rental (if it is charged) will clearly be paid by the council, but since the figure was 26 people, and I bet that there are a lot more people with carephones in Havering, I doubt that is the issue here. I suspect the issue is the council paying for people’s line rental for their normal telephone, and here is where I struggle to see a need.

@5 Watchman – cheers for that. Well then, yeah, it does sound a bit strange and moby’s are well cheap these days. I guess it could be for disabled kiddies or something to do distance learning. Hmm.

What you conveniently do not mention is that £10 million of cuts in Havering were decided in February in response to the then Labour government’s policies.

The effect of the change of government & Osborne’s emergency budget is to require savings of an extra £3 million.

Therefore, of Havering’s £13 million in cuts in the current year, £10 million are “Labour cuts” while only £3 million are “Tory/Coalition” cuts.

Over the medium term (til 2016), the business plan drawn up under the Labour government predicted cuts of £40m – £50m million over the period, while the new plan settles on the higher figure of £50 million.

So £4 out of every £5 are “Labour cuts”.

Since Havering have already identified waste & efficiency cuts of £6 million pounds in the current year (ii.e. twice as much as the Osborne budget required them to save), then ALL cuts in front line services are attributable to a Labour government.

“Regardless of the rights and wrongs of where cuts if any should fall the above phrasing is very irritating and inaccurate. They are not “footing the bill” they are simply receiving a bit less of someone else’s money.”

Wrong.

These are cuts to services used by – on the whole – elderly people.

We can reasonably assume that the vast majority of them worked and paid taxes throughout their lives, and were thus net contributors to the exchequer for most of their lives. Indeed some of them may have contributed a lot more than taxes, and defended this country in WW2. So this is not a case if “receiving a bit less of someone else money” so much as not getting the support and care they thought they were going to get when they were paying taxes to support the education of a bunch of right wingers and derivatives traders who have thoroughly proven themselves to be selfish risible people time and time again.

Flowerpower

My article has listed two ‘classes’ of cuts:

1. In-year cuts following the reductions to area based grants

The in-year cuts that I have referred to are those over and above those planned prior to the May election. They are in response to coalition cuts.

Your argument is that because under Labour they were cutting £10m, and £6m had already been identified through efficiency savings, then any frontline cuts caused by the £3m demanded by the coalition is in fact attributable to Labour.

This makes no sense. If we use your calculations, of the £10m to be saved under Labour, £6m were secured through efficiency savings, leaving £4m of potentially frontline cuts. So what? The coalition has locked these cuts in and added to them with an extra £3m. If anything, it simply shows that the government is stretching local authorities beyond what is possible with efficiency savings (and didn’t the Tories claim pre-election that their NI tax cut could be funded entirely through efficiency savings? That promise disappeared pretty fast).

If you want to blame Labour for the cuts they made themselves, or the state they left the country’s finances in, those are separate arguments. But it’s July 2010, David Cameron is prime minister, and these are coalition cuts.

2. Reductions in allowances and raised charges for adult social care

This is not in response to the in-year cuts, but if anything is in anticipation of the spending review. When in February, the council predicted £40-50m of cuts, that was based on a forecast of what a future government might do, not in response to what Labour had already confirmed. It was a guesstimate. Had Labour been elected, perhaps they would be making similar long-term cuts. In that case, I’d be calling these Labour cuts. But they weren’t, so I’m not.

Calling £4 out of every £5 a Labour cut is absurd. At best, £4 is what any of the three main parties would have carried out, while the extra £1 is what only the Tories and Lib Dems are carrying out. They’re still responsible for their own decision to proceed with the other £4 – or £40m, to put things in context.

If you go onto A Thousand Cuts you’ll see that Labour councils enacting swingeing cuts get similar treatment to Tory councils – have a look at anything I’ve written on Lewisham. I’m not a Labour member and do not write to defend their cuts. But a government is responsible for its own actions, and the coalition is responsible for its own cuts.

@ 9 Chaminda

1. In-year cuts following the reductions to area based grants
… The in-year cuts that I have referred to are those over and above those planned prior to the May election. They are in response to coalition cuts.

The reduction in Havering Council’s Area Based Grant as a result of Osborne’s emergency budget came to the grand total of £1,332,000.

Havering’s annual expenditure is roughly £160,000,000.

Asking Havering to find £1.3 million of efficiency savings out of a £160m spend is not such a big ask. Indeed, in 2009 Havering only spent £157 million, so the effect of Osborne’s cuts ain’t exactly taking Havering back to stone age levels of expenditure- it’s just going back to 2009 levels!)

Under Labour’s Keynesian economic ideology, public spending is supposed to rise in a recession to help the economy through the downturn, and then go down again between recessions.

Okay, …. so the last recession ended in June 2009. What do you expect?

As for “A Thousand Cuts” – it is simply a propaganda device to make the coalition look bad. It is predicated on a HUGE lie. The truth is that this year, and next and the year after the Coalition government’s managed spending in real terms will actually be HIGHER than in at least ten (possibly 11) years of the last Labour government. But that won’t stop ATC pretending the coalition is spending less.

…..oh and Chaminda @ 9

Your attempt to describe cuts made by Alistair Darling in his budget when Labour was in office as ‘Coalition Cuts’ is just another amazing example of the barefaced mendacity of the process.

Flowerpower

First, I would have set up ATC even if Labour had won, given their own spending reduction plans – these in-year local government cuts would not have been taking place, but the impact of a Labour victory in terms of cuts to NHS spending would have been more pronounced than under the coalition. Your attempts to portray the site as some kind of Labour propaganda are laughable.

Under Labour’s ‘Keynesian’ policies, public spending would go up during a recession and be maintained until a recovery is secure. The recovery is not yet secure, so you’re attempted gotcha over June 2009 falls flat. As it happens, while Labour talked a lot about Keynes, I don’t think it actually did much in the way of stimulus spending at all – it just threw tonnes of money at the banks for little in the way of return, with a small VAT cut and a couple of jobs schemes as window dressing.

As for Havering – well, if we take your argument that the coalition’s in-year cuts will make such a small dent in Havering’s total expenditure that it can be found entirely through efficiency savings, then why is it hitting frontline services? Because Havering is, er, making vulnerable people foot the bill?

As it happens, if you look at the reports from council meetings across the country, as I have, you will find that they uniformly decide to focus the area based grant cuts on the services funded by those grants – such as Connexions – because they know that the coming 20-33 percent local government cuts expected in the spending review will render any kind of cross-subsidy irrelevant – all spending lines are going to take a massive hit. To talk solely in terms of the £1.3m as if that’s all that’s going to be cut is ludicrous. Try telling that to a council boss of any party.

Chaminda

I see you don’t dare to address the BIG lie.

For you and ATC, every shift of resources from one budget heading to another is falsely branded a “cut”. So, if the government decides to spend more on schools and less on protocol at the Washington embassy, you’ll be screaming “Tory cuts”.

Do you deny my central point: that government managed expenditure (departmental spending) in real terms will continue to be at a higher level through to 2014 than it ever was under Labour with the sole exception of financial year 2009/10?

Do you deny that even with the so-called £6 billion of efficiency savings that Osborne introduced in his emergency budget (causing knock-on efficiency requirements in Havering and across the country) …. even with all these “in year cuts” you bang about, the truth is that Total Managed Expenditure in Real Terms (2008-9 prices) in this year (2010/11) is higher than it ever was between 1997-2010 .

Yes, that’s the fact you cannot bring yourself to acknowledge: the Coalition is still spending more on public services than Labour ever did.

There have – as yet – been NO Tory or Coalition cuts. Total spending is greater and will be until at least April next year.

In early 2012 total spending in real terms will only be fractionally different from Labour’s 2009/10 total. And even in 2014 the coalition’s spending on public services will still be higher in real terms than in any year under Labour before 2009.

If you have trouble grasping this – here’s a helpful graphic:

http://tinyurl.com/38yp3v3

Flowerpower

You’re not very good at this.

Here’s an idea. Don’t take it from me, given that I’m apparently a Labour propagandist (who didn’t vote Labour at the election, but never mind).

Take it from Edmund Conway, until recently the Telegraph’s economics editor. Here’s what he has to say on Total Managed Expenditure:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/edmundconway/100006701/please-read-this-before-trying-to-claim-the-government-is-not-cutting-spending/

Now, to make this a bit easier for you, Edmund Conway supports cutting public spending. Which is something I (largely) disagree with. But I respect his opinion because he (a) knows what he’s on about, and (b) evidently thinks about what he writes before he writes it. I happen to draw different conclusions, but I take his columns seriously, and would advise anyone to do likewise, regardless of their political persuasion.

You, on the other hand, provide ‘evidence’ for your BIG gotcha moment by way of the swivel-eyed rantfest that is the Coffee House blog. What next? Melanie Phillips on Muslims?

Flowerpower – must try harder.

Chaminda @ 14

classic mendacious evasion by you.

The Edmund Conway piece is an irrelevant diversion. He is correcting someone who made the error of looking at the cash value total managed expenditure, without adjusting for inflation.

The figures I gave you were adjusted for inflation – as you should know (hint: I said “real terms” and 2008-9 prices).

Second, clutching at straws, you then attack my arguments by attacking the source of the helpful graph I pointed towards to aid your understanding.

Actually I fail to see why you think the Spectator is any less reliable a source than the Telegraph (which you quote). But be that as maybe, my actual figures come from the budget documents on the Treasury website.

Now, will you kindly answer the question: do you accept that Total Managed Expenditure in REAL TERMS will continue at higher levels than under most of the period of the last Labour Government, or not?

Oh, and while you bash out an email to Fraser Nelson asking him for a comeback (or alternatively, asking him why his magazine’s full of shite), I’ll address this point you mention, that I missed earlier:

“For you and ATC, every shift of resources from one budget heading to another is falsely branded a “cut”. So, if the government decides to spend more on schools and less on protocol at the Washington embassy, you’ll be screaming “Tory cuts”.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. If the government found money to spend on frontline services in key areas by cutting out caviar at the Washington embassy, they’d get a thumbs up from me. But they’re not. They’re cutting money, not redirecting it.

Right, while I was typing 15 you bashed out a response. You perhaps should have taken your time because what you cooked up is nonsense.

Since you don’t appear to have fully read Conway’s piece, let me quote from it:

“To get a proper measure of the size of government spending you should try to offset it against economic growth and inflation.”

See that bit about economic growth? You kinda missed that bit out.

“In other words, you should view spending in terms of how it compares to the overall size of the economy, and viewed through this prism, the picture shows a big decrease.”

I could paste the whole article but I’ll let you actually read it for yourself. You clearly didn’t do so the first time.

Anyway, maybe you’re happy to spend your hours scribbling rubbish on messageboards but I have work to do. Private sector work, before you ask. So I’m going to leave it at that. Call it ‘mendacious’ if you want, see if anyone cares. I know your type – make a bad argument, see it knocked down, come up with another bad argument, see that knocked down, come up with another bad argument etc etc. I have better things to do.

And in answer to your question, my answer is that, based on Conway’s article, your question is irrelevant.

Chaminda @ 17

There’s no point in just getting wild and aggressive because the facts are uncomfortable. Stop diverting and stick to the main point.

I have read Conway’s piece right through.

If you read it again you will see that he quotes Table 2.3 of the Budget Red Book. That shows an ABOVE INFLATION RISE in Total Managed Expenditure from 2009/10 to 2010/11.

It doesn’t actually do the inflation sum for you, but I’m sure you’ll agree that the cash terms increase shown is well above inflation.

That proves my point that there has been no overall cut in departmental spending yet and there won’t be before next April. So any cuts allegation is premature.

Will there be?

Yes…. the Budget Red Book is clear: Para 2.12 of the Budget says: TME will fall in real terms by 4 per cent over the period.

So yes, there will be a reduction in public spending on services of 4% between now and 2016. That isn’t much. And even after the 4% real terms cut, the government will still be spending more than Labour did most of its time in government , yes….more in real terms..

If you refuse to believe what appeared in the Spectator, fair enough. Go to the Budget document itself. The TME figure is on page 44.

Now, instead of lashing out with insults, please will you carefully consider the point that I was right all along in saying that even after the cuts, TME will be higher than most of the time under Labour?

See that bit about economic growth? You kinda missed that bit out.

Nope. Just under the graph I pointed you to there’s another one showing the data as % of GDP. But while Conway’s right that that is useful to get an overall holistic picture, the growth stuff isn’t strictly relevant to the question about whether there has been savage or unwarranted cuts. All you need for that is to know the levels of real terms TME.

You are confusing TME and departmental expenditure. TME is not a measurement of spending on public services, because it includes debt interest repayments etc. The measurement of spending on public services is specifically departmental spending, and this is going to be cut severely in the coming years, be it by 10-15%, 25% or 33% in different departments.

That’s why your question, and your TME obsession, is not relevant. If you want to convince yourself that it is, that’s up to you.