Leading article: Wanted: some political honesty on public services
Both Labour and the Conservatives are obfuscating the issues
Latest in Leading Articles
Related articles
Opinion blogs
Tunnel, light at end of
At some point, doom and gloom about the economy is likely to turn round. Obviously, if the eurozone ...
Paul Volcker stands tall against the banking lobby
Why is Europe, which likes to present itself as an opponent of speculative "Anglo-Saxon" finance, li...
“Not growing inequality”
What do we want? “A fairer sharing of rewards not growing inequality.” Well said, Ed Mil...
On one of the most critical issues in British politics, a stifling blanket of denial has descended over Westminster. At Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons this week Gordon Brown promised that, under a Labour government, public spending would continue to rise in real terms over the coming years.
And so it probably will, largely thanks to unavoidable increases in government debt interest and rising welfare payments. But, assuming that the Government has reached the limits of its ability to take on debt and raise taxes, there will need to be serious cuts in other areas of public spending to compensate. Mr Brown chose to trumpet the "massive" spending cuts supposedly being planned by the Conservatives, while remaining silent, as ever, on where his own Government might seek to save money.
Yet the Conservatives are behaving no more impressively. When the opposition health spokesman, Andrew Lansley, suggested in an interview this week that there would be cuts across a host of official departments if the Tories won power, he was quickly silenced by his party. Sometimes there is no offence as grave as articulating the truth.
What British politics needs is some basic honesty from both parties. If David Cameron and his shadow chancellor, George Osborne, believe that cuts in public spending are needed to stabilise the public finances, they should be upfront about this. They are entitled to argue that the mismanagement of Labour necessitates such drastic action, but it is disingenuous of the Conservatives to issue blood-curdling warnings about the state of the public purse without giving some indication about what they would do to improve matters.
As for Mr Brown, he should admit that his own government is likely to need to find considerable savings in the years ahead, even if growth rebounds strongly. It is perfectly reasonable for the Prime Minister to argue that cutting public services now, while the British economy is still suffering, would be foolish; but it is not reasonable to ignore the fact that some sort of fiscal shake-up is needed further down the line.
We need this acceptance of economic reality so that our political system can move on to the serious debate about where those public sector cuts should, or should not, fall. If there is to be a reshaping of the public realm, it must be enacted with serious thought. The easy option is the salami-slicing approach, where the Treasury simply awards each department a smaller budget. But this has been tried before and its effect is to harm frontline public services, as the managers and civil servants who run these departments manoeuvre to protect their empires and push all the pain on to those who wield less political clout.
Instead, entire government spending programmes should be reconsidered, from ID cards, to big-ticket defence projects, to public sector pensions. At the moment, this debate about strategic spending cuts is dormant. The Chancellor, Alistair Darling, has signalled that he will not publish the Government's usual spending review this autumn. Everyone understands that there is a considerable level of uncertainty about the prospects for the public finances. But let us at least see the potential scenarios upon which the Treasury is working. The shareholders of public companies expect managers to continue to present forward plans in uncertain times. Why should taxpayers expect any less from the Government?
We also need a serious engagement from our politicians with the question of how our public services can be made more efficient. Figures from the Office for National Statistics this week showed that productivity levels across the public sector have fallen over the past decade. A vast amount of money has been pumped into health and education but the value that taxpayers have received has been patchy.
Our public services are going to have to get used to doing more with less. If they are to improve, that improvement will have to come from efficiencies rather than higher funding. The Cabinet held a three-hour meeting yesterday discussing public sector reform. But shaking up our public sector will be the work of years. One meeting, even a three-hour one, can only be the start of a long, difficult process.
Of course, it is not hard to see why both the Government and the Conservatives have chosen obfuscation over openness. The Tories fear that the public still associates them with painful cuts of the past and could punish them again at the ballot box if this debate moves up the political agenda. Meanwhile, ministers are loath to admit that their historic investments in the public sector since 2000 now need to be thrown into reverse. The Liberal Democrats have been admirably open about their belief that the role of the state needs to be reconsidered, but there is only so much the third party can accomplish on its own.
Yet this debate cannot be evaded forever; these questions are simply too important to all our futures to remain unanswered.
- 1 Hamish McRae: Living standards will start to get better sooner than you think
- 2 Kate Allen: It's time for America to put an end to this shameful scandal
- 3 Christina Patterson: The struggle against police racism has just got a lot harder
- 4 Matthew Norman: There's always the Human Rights Act, Trevor
- 5 Leading: Now stand by for Act II of this Greek drama
- 6 Dominic Lawson: Spare me these orgies of self-congratulation
- 7 Mark Steel: If religion is 'marginal', I'm the Pope
- 1 How Koscielny became prince of the Emirates
- 2 Apple admits it has a human rights problem
- 3 Spotify: 1 million plays, £108 return
- 4 Six Grammys, five years off: Adele puts love before career
- 5 Lightning kills an entire football team
- 6 Police confiscate passport from Brooks' assistant
- 7 Nauru and Abkhazia: One is a destitute microstate marooned in the South Pacific, the other is a disputed former Soviet Republic 13,000km away, so why are they so keen to be friends?
- 8 I was born to be a killer. Every night I see the Devil in my dreams
- 9 Mark Steel: If religion is 'marginal', I'm the Pope
- 10 Rothschild loses libel case, and reveals secret world of money and politics
Free trial of new Independent iPad app
Get your daily dose of the best of British journalism, sponsored by American Airlines
Win a three-week coastal jaunt
Spend three weeks exploring every nook and cranny of gorgeous Atlantic Canada.
Amazing restaurant offers
Three glasses of free champagne and a special menu at 46 top London restaurants.
Latest Independent competitions
Win anything from gadgets to five-star holidays on our competitions and offers page.
Commercial thought leaders
Watch the best in the business world give their insights into the world of business.
Career Services
Day In a Page
No secularism please, we're British
Working as a jail torturer ruined my life
New Arsenal face an old question of credibility in San Siro




Comments