Monthly Archives: January 2011

Frontline first? By Mike Thatcher

31 January 2011 | Mike Thatcher

Just before David Cameron moved into Number Ten, he was asked what would happen if his ministers proposed cuts that involved frontline reductions. ‘They’ll be sent straight back to their departments to think again,’ he claimed. Read more...

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Big funding hole in the Big Society, by John Tizard

31 January 2011 | John Tizard

The Public Finance headline last week (‘Charities hurt by law of unintended consequences’) should be a wake-up call to politicians nationally and locally as well as to all to public sector budget managers.  There is no point in increasing the volume of the rhetoric to promote the Big Society or to extend the ‘right to supply” and the transfer of assets if at the same time the very means of sustaining (let alone ‘growing’) the community, voluntary and wider third sectors are being withdrawn. Read more...

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Ditch the Universal Credit, by Patrick Nolan

31 January 2011 | Patrick Nolan

The coalition government plans to replace all existing working age benefits with a single Universal Credit. Last week the Work and Pensions Committee held an oral evidence session on this proposal. I was asked to appear before the committee and explain Reform’s concerns over these plans. Read more...

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Functional friction, by John Marsh

28 January 2011 | John Marsh

Another working week draws to an end. For many in local government, though, it is a week they will long remember; one in which they were told that they will be made redundant in the near future. Read more...

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The real price of PFI, by Margaret Cuthbert and Jim Cuthbert

28 January 2011 | Margaret Cuthbert and Jim Cuthbert

The financial crisis and the Comprehensive Spending Review have put severe pressure on public sector bodies to cut back on spending and to increase efficiency. The way in which the axe will fall on services, however, may be far from even-handed. Some commitments entered into in the days of relative plenty are contractual commitments that will last in some cases for possibly 50 years. Once these contractual commitments are honoured, then the squeeze required on other service areas may be disproportionately severe. Read more...

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Collective irresponsibility, by Colin Talbot

28 January 2011 | Colin Talbot

The triumphant early days of the coalition are rapidly becoming soured by the demands of Cabinet government and political compromise on entwined parties. The strain is showing Read more...

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Two Eds are better than one, by Dan Corry

28 January 2011 | Dan Corry

Conservative commentators are licking their lips at the thought of Ed Balls as shadow chancellor. Here are Labour’s supposed economic failures on the economy, the deficit and financial regulation all beautifully personified. Read more...

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Localism and the blame game, by Colin Talbot

27 January 2011 | Colin Talbot

Andy Coulson may have gone, but the evidence of the spinner’s dark arts at work permeates the coalition government’s strategy. Before the election, both Tories and Liberal Democrats made much of the fact they were going to be open and honest with voters about the effects of the cuts they were proposing (as opposed to Labour, and especially Gordon Brown, who were clearly in denial). Since the election, the tone has changed dramatically and now any cuts to ‘front-line’ services is clearly someone else’s incompetence and not the result of their dash to slash. Read more...

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Treasury sets PFI terms in concrete, by Mark Hellowell

26 January 2011 | Mark Hellowell

In this time of austerity in state spending, almost all areas of the public sector are under pressure to cut costs and strip out waste. But for investors in the new schools, hospitals, prisons, transport infrastructure and defence equipment provided under the private finance initiative, there has been little need for concern. Read more...

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Growing pains, by Malcolm Prowle

25 January 2011 | Malcolm Prowle

The Office for National Statistics today released figures on the performance of the UK economy in the last quarter of 2010, which showed a contraction of 0.5% following growth of 0.7% in the previous quarter. Read more...

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