By Tash Shifrin
July 3, 2009
A powerful committee of MPs has renewed its call for a full parliamentary debate on Spending Reviews and Pre-Budget Reports as the political battle over public spending intensified this week.
The Commons liaison committee praised plans outlined in a Treasury white paper to bring consistency to the figures for Budgets, the ‘estimates’ of government spending put to Parliament for approval, and the accounts of Whitehall expenditure that are checked by the National Audit Office.
‘At present, these differ considerably,’ the MPs noted in a July 3 report, Financial scrutiny: parliamentary control over government budgets. ‘For example, there is £129bn of spending for 2008/09 currently included in departmental budgets but not in the estimates presented to Parliament.’
Aligning the figures on public spending would ‘be a significant contribution to remedying... the House’s inability to examine effectively the spending plans of the future years of each government Spending Review’, they said.
But the committee – made up of the chairs of the Commons select committees – said it believed there was ‘scope for further improvements to a system which may still be inadequate to the task of holding the Executive to account in its stewardship of public resources’.
The report said: ‘We also repeat our view that the government should give an undertaking to provide a day’s debate on the outcome of each Spending Review and each
Pre-Budget Report.’
The war of words between the government and the Conservatives over their future spending plans was stoked up this week by Business Secretary Peter Mandelson’s statement that there would not be a Spending Review before the election.
A spokesman for Chancellor Alistair Darling later issued a correction, saying ‘now would be the wrong time to set departmental budgets through to 2014’ because of economic uncertainty but that Darling would ‘return to these issues’ in the autumn PBR.
Audit Commission chief executive Steve Bundred also waded into the future spending row, telling delegates at the Local Government Association’s annual conference in Harrogate: ‘Both political parties have pledged that whatever happens, they will protect health and education. I think that’s a big mistake.’ Health and education had been among the best funded public service areas but were ‘among the most inefficient’, he added.
The continuing public spending row overshadowed the launch of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s draft legislative programme and a national plan, Building Britain’s Future, on June 29. The policy document focused on establishing core ‘entitlements’ to public services. Pledges of new money were noticeably absent, in acknowledgement of the need to reduce the government deficit and restore the public finances.
The seriousness of Britain’s economic situation was reinforced the following day when the Office for National Statistics issued revised gross domestic product figures for the first quarter of 2009. These revealed a 2.4% fall on the previous quarter – sharply worse than last month’s estimate of a 1.9% drop. GDP was 4.9% lower than in the first quarter of 2008, the largest fall on record, the ONS said.
In his foreword to Building Britain’s Future, Brown said the country faced ‘a moment of profound change... driven by the global economic downturn and the crisis of trust in our political system’.
The government would ‘push ahead further and faster over the months ahead with a bold, reformist agenda’, he pledged. Headline measures included the conversion of national targets to ‘entitlements’ to NHS services and a range of education and housing measures.
The document announced that the government would invest a further £1.5bn in housebuilding, money that will be switched from other areas.
A Treasury spokesman told Public Finance that around £690m would come from ‘reprioritisation’ within the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Homes and Communities Agency. Capital underspends from elsewhere in Whitehall would make up the rest. This would include £200m from the Department for Children, Schools and Families and £350m set aside by the Department for Transport for the M25 widening scheme, before it became clear private finance was available.
July 3, 2009
A powerful committee of MPs has renewed its call for a full parliamentary debate on Spending Reviews and Pre-Budget Reports as the political battle over public spending intensified this week.
The Commons liaison committee praised plans outlined in a Treasury white paper to bring consistency to the figures for Budgets, the ‘estimates’ of government spending put to Parliament for approval, and the accounts of Whitehall expenditure that are checked by the National Audit Office.
‘At present, these differ considerably,’ the MPs noted in a July 3 report, Financial scrutiny: parliamentary control over government budgets. ‘For example, there is £129bn of spending for 2008/09 currently included in departmental budgets but not in the estimates presented to Parliament.’
Aligning the figures on public spending would ‘be a significant contribution to remedying... the House’s inability to examine effectively the spending plans of the future years of each government Spending Review’, they said.
But the committee – made up of the chairs of the Commons select committees – said it believed there was ‘scope for further improvements to a system which may still be inadequate to the task of holding the Executive to account in its stewardship of public resources’.
The report said: ‘We also repeat our view that the government should give an undertaking to provide a day’s debate on the outcome of each Spending Review and each
Pre-Budget Report.’
The war of words between the government and the Conservatives over their future spending plans was stoked up this week by Business Secretary Peter Mandelson’s statement that there would not be a Spending Review before the election.
A spokesman for Chancellor Alistair Darling later issued a correction, saying ‘now would be the wrong time to set departmental budgets through to 2014’ because of economic uncertainty but that Darling would ‘return to these issues’ in the autumn PBR.
Audit Commission chief executive Steve Bundred also waded into the future spending row, telling delegates at the Local Government Association’s annual conference in Harrogate: ‘Both political parties have pledged that whatever happens, they will protect health and education. I think that’s a big mistake.’ Health and education had been among the best funded public service areas but were ‘among the most inefficient’, he added.
The continuing public spending row overshadowed the launch of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s draft legislative programme and a national plan, Building Britain’s Future, on June 29. The policy document focused on establishing core ‘entitlements’ to public services. Pledges of new money were noticeably absent, in acknowledgement of the need to reduce the government deficit and restore the public finances.
The seriousness of Britain’s economic situation was reinforced the following day when the Office for National Statistics issued revised gross domestic product figures for the first quarter of 2009. These revealed a 2.4% fall on the previous quarter – sharply worse than last month’s estimate of a 1.9% drop. GDP was 4.9% lower than in the first quarter of 2008, the largest fall on record, the ONS said.
In his foreword to Building Britain’s Future, Brown said the country faced ‘a moment of profound change... driven by the global economic downturn and the crisis of trust in our political system’.
The government would ‘push ahead further and faster over the months ahead with a bold, reformist agenda’, he pledged. Headline measures included the conversion of national targets to ‘entitlements’ to NHS services and a range of education and housing measures.
The document announced that the government would invest a further £1.5bn in housebuilding, money that will be switched from other areas.
A Treasury spokesman told Public Finance that around £690m would come from ‘reprioritisation’ within the Department for Communities and Local Government and the Homes and Communities Agency. Capital underspends from elsewhere in Whitehall would make up the rest. This would include £200m from the Department for Children, Schools and Families and £350m set aside by the Department for Transport for the M25 widening scheme, before it became clear private finance was available.
