There’s a difference between not identifying precisely what is going to be the focus of public spending cuts before you have seen the books, and denying that there will be any cuts, while simultaneously planning them.

One of the important things that the recent leak has shown is that the Government aren’t publishing all their financial data – the Tories don’t know how bad it all is. Until they do they can’t identify what should be cut. What they can do is state that there will need to be stringent cuts in expenditure, and that these will hurt. And they more or less are doing this.

As a side-note, doesn’t it hurt to watch the Prime Minister lying in press conferences? To see him state, in response to a specific question about departmental spending cuts that we now know were more optimistic than the figures he was being given by the Treasury, that such reports were untrue and that public spending on schools and hospitals would continue to increase year on year? We expect evasions, but that was just a flat-out untruth.

“excitedly promoting leaked Treasury documents about possible spending cuts.”

Another example of Cameron at his most juvenile.

The Treasury would be failing in its fiscal responsibilities if it did not continuously consider policy options.

At least Sunder admits that Brown has failed the honesty test – hah! – as if we didn’t know that already.

Unless Brown or the 10 Downing St officials make a special effort, there is no reason why the PM should routinely know about policy options under active consideration by Treasury officials.

Think back and perhaps recall that when Brown was Chancellor, he and the Treasury were notorious for keeping Blair and his 10 Downing St officials in the dark about what they were up to. As (? Treasury) spin at the time went, Brown was running domestic policy, with Treasury fingers dipping into (meaning: interfering with) almost all departments, while Blair was left to run the foreign affairs stuff, manage all those “liberal interventionist” wars he was so keen on and trip the light fantastic in foreign visits.

Note this interview in The Times printed on 16 July 2009:

“Britain’s most senior civil servant has warned of sweeping cuts in some public services to maintain spending on key government programmes such as those dealing with care for the elderly, obesity and climate change.

“In an interview with The Times, Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, suggested that some departments would suffer more than others in the looming spending squeeze. . .

“Sir Gus suggested that lessons could be learnt from the Canadian Government, which cut its spending by 20 per cent over four years to lift the country out of its 1990s recession. . . ”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6715497.ece

Believe me, I’m not the only one who thinks that Cameron behaves in a juvenile way.

Bob, those Treasury projections weren’t policy options, they were an analysis of what the 2009 Budget would actually mean in terms of departmental spending – not a plan, not an option for future policies, but a break-down of what Labour’s current economic policies are.

In other words, when Gordon Brown said that the election was a choice between Labour investment and Tory cuts he was either so stupid that he hadn’t understood the budget his Chancellor had implemented or he was lying. It’s not a question of back-room boys conjuring up possible future options.

“Bob, those Treasury projections weren’t policy options, they were an analysis of what the 2009 Budget would actually mean in terms of departmental spending – not a plan, not an option for future policies, but a break-down of what Labour’s current economic policies are.”

No. They were post-2010 options. The budget did not cover these years. Obviously these are policy choices still to be made.

But you’re right that Brown has been rather ignoring this in his attacks on Cameron which were ill-judged.

When is Cameron going to come clean about the 30% cuts he has allegedly asked the Treasury to find, given honesty is appparently so valued by the opposition leader?

They were options in the same sense that the 2009 budget was an option. The paper analysed what the projections made in the 2009 budget (ie current Government policy) would mean in terms of departmental spending given the effectively non-optional increases in spending on interest payments and social security. They weren’t options for future policy, they were an analysis of current Government policy.

And his attacks on Cameron were ill-judged in the sense of being utterly dishonest. The whole ’10% cuts’ line of attack was an argument in bad faith. Which leads one to the question of how Cameron can offer cast-iron policy committments on public spending when the Government not only won’t release the figures, but lies about its own plans.

Wasn’t Cameron going to end Punch and Judy politics? Lame politicking, honestly.

8 – yeah, I mean who cares about tiny little things like misleading the House of Commons? So passe…

They were options in the same sense that the 2009 budget was an option. The paper analysed what the projections made in the 2009 budget (ie current Government policy) would mean in terms of departmental spending given the effectively non-optional increases in spending on interest payments and social security. They weren’t options for future policy, they were an analysis of current Government policy.

No. Policy decisions have not been made on how to do the adjustment yet. This was illustrative “if policy remains constant this is what needs to happen” work by officials.

A Government could – for example – choose to a) meet relatively more of this through tax revenue versus spending cut; b) choose cuts between programme spend v workforce v investment; c) choose to focus cuts on certain areas at the expense of others.

The civil service does not decide on this policy with no reference to elected politicians, even if this would be more convenient for your argument.

No. Policy decisions have not been made on how to do the adjustment yet. This was illustrative “if policy remains constant this is what needs to happen” work by officials.

It’s not ‘what needs to happen’, it’s ‘what is scheduled to happen’. This isn’t a speculative policy paper, it’s a description of what current policy is.

The Government’s economic policy was set out in the 2009 budget. This gave projected income/expenditure figures for the next few years. The Treasury paper leaked to the Tories took those figures and set out how they would be impacted by the increase in spending on interest payments and social security (Gordon Brown’s old friends ‘the price of failure’). Since overall public spending is due to fall (minimally, by 0.1%), departmental spending must necessarily fall by a greater amount – by, in fact, just under 10% over three years.

The fact that the Government could change its policy in the future is not a disproof of the contention that this is its current policy. As such, when Gordon Brown stood up promising increased spending on schools and hospitals under Labour (versus Tory cuts) he was lying.

Unless Brown or the 10 Downing St officials make a special effort, there is no reason why the PM should routinely know about policy options under active consideration by Treasury officials.

Right. Because Brown is not a detail-obsessed control freak, is he?
And it’s not the issue that will dominate the election, is it? Right.

PS I agree the boy king is not being honest either, but Brown is in a different league. (We will keep spending blah blah blah…)

Gordon Brown tells parliament that spending will continue to rise despite the fact that projections based upon the numbers in his Chancellor’s own budget say that spending will fall.

David Cameron says he will need to make 10% cuts based on IFS calculations derived from the same figures which then turn out to be in line with the a set of Treasury predictions that the Prime Minister pretended did not exist.

And yet Cameron is the dishonest one because his party has asked the Treasury to do some scenario testing about what would happen if they had to make 30% cuts.

That might be how you guys feel in your guts, it might be what your instincts tell you, but imagine how this looks to anyone who isn’t dyed in the wool Labour. Ludicrous.

There are many sticks with which one might plausibly beat Cameron over the head but accusing him of greater duplicity over public spending than Gordon Brown is probably the stupidest yet.

@TimJ

“It’s not ‘what needs to happen’, it’s ‘what is scheduled to happen’. This isn’t a speculative policy paper, it’s a description of what current policy is”

There is no current policy to deal with the deficit. This is maybe fairly damning on Brown in itself. HMT officials have made some assumptions about what might need to happen – and don’t forget preparing for the likely Cameron government.

Those figures will be way off the mark.

If Labour (by some unbelievable event happening) win power they’ll weigh more towards safeguarding programmes for the least well off, taxing the better off and trying to put as much pain on their non-front-line workforce as possible. There will undoubtedly be several policy changes.

If (when) the Conservatives win power, they’ll weigh more towards cutting programmes for the least well-off, cutting benefits and tax credits, squeezing front-line and back-office services alike, enforcing across the board cuts for public sector workers, laying off staff, taxing the poor and finding the room to cut inheritance tax to help a few hundred millionaires out.

I don’t understand how you can confuse the workings of Civil Servants about *a possible scenario for cutting the deficit* with *policy decisions made by the Government*. They’re two seperate things.

“Can Cameron meet his own honesty test on cuts?”

I wouldn’t have thought so – politicians of all creed are often mum on spending cuts.

Will it matter? I wouldn’t have thought so. This blog and it’s commentors often make up lovely stories about how the Conservative cuts mean knocking down people’s homes and sacking doctors and nurses. All a Cameron announcement would do would be to give you a cash figure, and then say how many houses/doctors/nurses that means.

I don’t understand how you can confuse the workings of Civil Servants about *a possible scenario for cutting the deficit* with *policy decisions made by the Government*. They’re two seperate things.

I’m not really. I’m refuting the point raised by Bob B that these papers represented speculative future policy musings by back room Treasury boffins, by stating that what they are are descriptions of what Government spending plans will mean for departmental spending. It’s not a decision made by anybody – it’s an attempt to illustrate a decision that has already been taken. In the budget.

If Labour (by some unbelievable event happening) win power they’ll weigh more towards safeguarding programmes for the least well off, taxing the better off and trying to put as much pain on their non-front-line workforce as possible. There will undoubtedly be several policy changes.

If (when) the Conservatives win power, they’ll weigh more towards cutting programmes for the least well-off, cutting benefits and tax credits, squeezing front-line and back-office services alike, enforcing across the board cuts for public sector workers, laying off staff, taxing the poor and finding the room to cut inheritance tax to help a few hundred millionaires out.

You missed the baby-eating policy. But this is beside the point being argued. Labour set out their spending plans in the budget. That’s their economic policy. That budget had certain implications for departmental spending. The Treasury used the figures from the budget and projected that there would be cuts of nearly 10% in departmental spending. Knowing that (or being wilfully, culpably blind to it) Gordon Brown lied about Government spending plans. I’d have thought that was a reasonably noteworthy point.