Whitehall cuts are not enough

12 April 2012

AS THE Chancellor prepares to reveal in Wednesday's Budget just how far Britain has gone into the red, it seems almost certain that he will have to cut public spending. Mr Darling is reported to be considering £15 billion in Whitehall efficiency cuts. Such promises must be treated with caution.

When Gordon Brown was at the Treasury, he brought in BAe's Sir Peter Gershon to identify £21 billion of savings over three years. However, the National Audit Office found that many savings allegedly achieved could not be verified or measured. Similarly, government claims to have removed almost 80,000 staff over the period conflicted with figures on public-sector employment from the Office of National Statistics.

Pet ministerial projects and empire-building by the Sir Humphreys mean waste perpetually needs trimming in Whitehall. Making meaningful savings involves tackling duplication such as that exposed today in a report from the Reform think-tank: at the Department for Communities and Local Government, for example, whose £38 billion budget is Whitehall's fifth largest, many staff play a business support role that would be better carried out by the Business Department, if at all. As for achieving really big savings, that means projects such as the ID card scheme would have to go.

Yet whatever the numbers, promises to tackle waste create a political problem for Labour. Ministers cannot cast Conservative commitments to cut public spending as an attack on schools and hospitals if they are themselves promising something similar. If Mr Darling is serious about balancing the books with efficiency cuts, he will need to show that ministers really have the will to enforce them, and will do so better than the Tories would.

Sir Paul's silence

THE crisis now engulfing the Metropolitan Police is bad for London. While the culture and tactics that led to violent clashes at the G20 demonstrations and to the Damian Green affair will need proper investigation, Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson could help restore confidence in the short term by being more visibly engaged with the problems.

Three clashes at this month's G20 demonstrations have now been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, most seriously the attack on Ian Tomlinson, who subsequently died. A second post mortem on Mr Tomlinson revealed that he died not from a heart attack but from internal bleeding. Meanwhile, another officer is accused of pointing a 50,000 volt Taser at G20 protesters. Further amateur footage is emerging of other police violence, while one protester who was ill said she was not allowed through the cordon to seek medical attention. In addition, it has been revealed that officers who raided the office of Damian Green MP searched his computer for messages from civil liberties chief Shami Chakrabati.

The strong impression is that parts of the force are out of control. David Gilbertson, a former Met commander and assistant inspector of constabulary, has today accused the police of suffering from a systemic failure of leadership. For now, the most glaring failure of authority is that of Sir Paul. The Met's Commissioner must give police officers the leadership that they so needed under his predecessor. The public, too, demand nothing less.

The right note

THE SIMON Bolivar Youth Orchestra galvanised audiences at the Royal Festival Hall last week, demonstrating the success of El Sistema, the Venezuelan programme for free classical music education for all. We report today on the pilot version of a similar programme under way in Lambeth. The cellist Julian Lloyd Webber hopes that by 2011, 600 children, provided with instruments and free lessons, will have joined the programmes' ensembles. It is an inspirational project and deserves to succeed.

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