The coalition presents itself as a clean break from Labour’s command-and-control regime. But its fascination with Spending Reviews, business plans and milestones tells a different story
This is the traditional time of year for reflecting on the past and gazing into the future. The cold snap makes it seem even more appropriate to indulge in a little early reflection and speculation.
What a strange year it has been – a coalition government was unexpected, one between the Tories and Liberal Democrats even more so. But there it is, and it has survived until its first Christmas – I wonder what Dave will be buying Nick, and vice versa?
The formation of the coalition, and its early policies, have been examined in forensic detail over the past eight months by the instant historians of the commentariat. Sometimes it has been hard to keep up with the pace of change – not just the screeching U-turn in public finances, but also the radical plans for health, education and welfare.
But in all this change, some bits of continuity have gone unremarked – and in one case this is going to lead to some very interesting conundrums for the coalition in due course.
One of the more radical changes under New Labour was the introduction, right from the outset, of a new multi-year budgeting system for public finances, coupled with output and outcome targets. Often lazily characterised as akin to Soviet Five Year Plans by analysts who ought to know better, the Labour government’s Comprehensive Spending Reviews were a genuine attempt to be more ‘strategic’ in government: setting more medium-term goals, redirecting resources to priorities and checking to see what is actually being achieved.
Although often criticised by opposition parties and the media, the coalition government has adopted, even if slightly adapted, New Labour’s system.
We have recently had its first Comprehensive Spending Review, which was in most respects, as a mechanism, identical to the five New Labour Spending Reviews that preceded it. True, the coalition’s version ambitiously set out plans for four years rather than Labour’s standard of three – some might think it ironic that this extremely ‘liberal’ government should attempt more planning, rather than less. And remember Labour only managed to stick to the three-year cycle for two of the five iterations for which it was in charge.
Despite rubbishing Labour’s so-called ‘targetry’, the coalition has adopted much the same approach. It has ‘Departmental Business Plans’ peppered with ‘milestones’ and measures of inputs and impacts that look remarkably like the old Public Service Agreements in new clothes.
These are due to be further refined in the spring. But what is really interesting is where the Four Year Plan takes us. Very specifically, it takes us to July 2014 – when the current plan will be running out and a new one will be needed for implementation in financial year 2015/16. If the coalition lasts that long, and that is by no means certain, Spending Review 2014 will pose an interesting and, more than a little tricky, problem for the two parties.
If they go ahead with an SR 2014, they will be in essence writing a joint manifesto for the general election due in May 2015. It would be hard to see how they could sign up to a new three- or four-year plan in July 2014, start implementing it in the March 2015 Budget, and then go their separate ways with different public spending priorities for the election in May 2015. The logic would clearly drive them towards entering the lists not as two separate parties, but as the coalition.
Obviously, politicians are not going to allow themselves to be tied down too much by what is, after all, just a process. New Labour proved adept at fiddling with dates of Spending Reviews – SR 2000 was a year ‘early’ to get their spending increases in before Election 2001. SR 2007 was a year and several months ‘late’ to allow Gordon Brown to get into 10 Downing Street.
But it is a bit harder to see how the coalition is going to get itself out of this one. The Four Year Plan that seemed such a spiffing idea this year might just turn out to be more millstone than milestone.
Colin Talbot is professor of public policy and management at Manchester Business School
