Savage cuts from a savage administration
Disclaimer: I am a Labour Party member and campaigned (successfully!) for my local MP in the last election. That probably counts as something of a vested interest.
I simply cannot believe what I am hearing. The quick-fire round of spending cuts – amounting to over £6billion across government departmentss – was merely ‘efficiency savings’. If these are minor, I really start to dread what’s coming next: because a lot of the cuts aren’t mere efficiency.
(I particularly blame the Lib Dems for this one.) Child Trust Funds (CTFs) have been completely axed. I am waiting for someone to tell me how trying to ensure that every child in this country had a decent chance of having even a small amount of money waiting for them when they grew up is an inefficiency. At least the Tories had originally said they were going to limit it to the poorest families – let’s all thank our progressive friends for pushing that saving grace out of the way, shall we?
There are fewer university places than promised. Please, point me to the answer: how is having fewer graduates to boost the economy an efficient way of getting us out of the economic low we’re currently in?
BECTA is being disestablished. Yes, it cost the taxpayer money. But its work was to reduce the cost to schools of IT – and it did that job very well. This particular cut is going to cost more money. How is that efficient?
No, a Labour government couldn’t have avoided cuts entirely. I’m not saying that at all. What a Labour government would have done is actually sat down and thought about cuts, and how those might have impact beyond the immediate term.
Polly Toynbee in today’s Guardian puts it far better than I could:
This was supposed to be the easy, painless, efficiency savings, the no-one-gets-hurt waste-cutters. It won’t feel that way, especially for the young.
Who else is looking forward to budget day, then?
