George Osborne's austerity programme of public spending cuts was marred by a short-termist approach and a lack of joined-up thinking across government, an influential Westminster watchdog said today.
Faced with the need to find £200 billion in cuts over four years in the 2010 Spending Review, the Treasury took the axe to those budgets that were easiest to cut, even though they might undermine the Government's stated priority of encouraging growth, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee found.
In a report, the cross-party committee described some cuts as "ill thought-through" and said there was "no evidence of clear thinking" about how savings in one Whitehall ministry could impose knock-on costs for other departments.
The report cited the decision to slash spending on capital projects from £60bn to £38bn in real terms, some of which was later reversed as the Chancellor struggled to inject life into a moribund economy.
And the MPs said that staff numbers at the UK Border Agency were cut "too quickly", causing a backlog of immigration case work and some of the employees having to be rehired.
The Chancellor was constrained by political decisions to protect the budgets for the NHS, schools and overseas aid, which left departments accounting for just 40% of the Government's day-to-day spending – including local government and justice – bearing the brunt of the cuts, the report found.
The committee also raised concerns that the Treasury did not have enough information to make "meaningful comparisons" between different candidates for the chop.
The Government's budgetary system encourages departments to focus on their own interests, rather than working together to lower costs, the report found.
The committee's Labour chairwoman Margaret Hodge said: "The Government does not fully understand the impact of the cuts it is making. It is focusing on short-term priorities rather than the longer-term view. The 2010 Spending Review concentrated on what could be cut quickly, rather than assessing the likely impact of the cuts."
Ms Hodge said the Treasury needed to "up its game", adding: "Too often, departments concentrate on their own self-interest, protecting their turf rather than ensuring joined-up thinking across Government."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article