Monthly Archives: October 2010

BIS gets busy, by Tony Travers

The business of government is never done. No sooner had ministers published last week’s Spending Review than they launched yesterday’s local growth white paper, which adds new detail to the anti-top-down approach of the Coalition.  With a foreword by Nick Clegg and published by Vince Cable’s Business, Innovation and Skills department, the white paper offers what must be seen as very much a Liberal Democrat take on the world.  Read more...

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Devil in benefit detail, by Conor Ryan

The coalition is in trouble on several fronts. Boris has started his re-election campaign with a vengeance, out-Kenning Ken on the curbs on housing benefit. The plans to restrict child benefit to basic rate taxpayers are proving rather more complicated than they were presented. The politics of both policies is probably right, despite Labour’s objections, but the government have erred because of a fundamental weakness: their inattention to detail. Read more...

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The investment challenge, by Nick Prior

This year public sector net investment – which the government defines as capital expenditure less depreciation – was at its highest since 1976 at 3.1% of GDP, or £42.4 billion. But this figure is set to fall by £8 billion next year and will reach just 1.2% of GDP by 2014-15. Read more...

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Infrastructure Plan: let battle commence, by Shapna Roy

Three is the magic number. This week’s Infrastructure Plan completed a triumvirate of public policy documents designed to cut public spending and improve cost efficiencies. Following the Emergency Budget and the Comprehensive Spending Review however, we had to wait until the Infrastructure Plan to get any clarity on the future of public/private partnerships and I say clarity in a loose sense here. Read more...

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Pensions review: no U-turn on Turner, by Nigel Stanley

Lord Turner’s Pensions Commission apparently caused the biggest row between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Blair backed Turner and won that fight, and now the coalition has swung behind the reforms too. Read more...

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Community budgets: a compromise too far, by John Tizard

Last week, in advance of the Comprehensive Spending Review, I wrote a piece for the Public Finance blog contemplating whether it would rejuvenate Total Place. Post CSR, my blunt answer has to be ‘no’. Read more...

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More questions than answers, by Ken Lee

Johnny Nash’s 1972 album ‘I Can See Clearly Now’ contains a number of gems, one of them being ‘There Are More Questions Than Answers’.  That title certainly seems very applicable to last week’s Comprehensive Spending Review and its possible effects on local authority housing. Read more...

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Green for growth, by Steve Lang

While today’s growth figures were not as bad as expected by analysts, the fall from the previous quarter together with last week’s Spending Review will have focused minds in Numbers 10 and 11 Downing Street. It was perhaps not surprising that David Cameron opted to focus on growth in his speech to the CBI yesterday. Read more...

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Treasury tricks, by Colin Talbot

Gordon Brown was notorious as chancellor for announcements that looked and sounded good on the day, only to unravel as theatrics and wheezes became apparent as experts got to examine the figures. He managed to turn ‘the devil is in the detail’ from an infrequently used aphorism into an Iron Law of Budgets. Read more...

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Equality and the CSR, by Melissa Benn

When the CSR cuts were announced this week, my first thought was for friends and acquaintances working in health, education or other public sector jobs or the several single parents I know, reliant on a mix of benefits and part time work.  Most of these, I soon realised, were women. Read more...

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