Party Lines: November 4th

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

A mixed bag of stories today, with George Osborne appearing in front of the Treasury select committee, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services drawing politicians for speeches and police officers being forcibly retired.

Following to reports that three police forces have been given approval to forcibly retire officers who have thirty years or more service, Ed Balls responded:

“The Tory-Lib Dem government is putting chief constables and police authorities in an impossible position. Not only is the Home Secretary cutting police funding by 20%, she is also making the biggest cuts in the first two years. That will make it impossible to protect frontline policing by making long-term efficiencies.”

“This blunt instrument was never intended for this purpose and, where implemented, will mean all officers above the thirty year threshold being forced to retire. It will mean losing some of our most experienced people from the police service.”

“The public are rightly concerned that losing thousands of police officers will undermine the fight against crime and anti-social behaviour.”

John Healey was speaking at the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, and said there is a real terms cut being made to NHS funding:

“By all means point, as ministers do, to the extra money for social care. But don’t double count the credit and don’t double count the funding. Because when £1 billion switched from the NHS to social care is taken into account, the Government has not protected the NHS as it promised. It’s not the real terms increase of 0.4% they claimed. It’s a real terms cut of 0.5%.”

George Osborne appeared in front of the Treasury Select Committee, and faced some very tough question from Labour MP John Mann. Writing later for LabourList, Mann repeated his argument – that this is an alternative to these cuts:

“The UK National Debt certainly looks scary-‘the largest ever’ -but that’s due to inflation, not our underlying economic performance. As Osborne admitted to me today in the Treasury Committee, our national debt as a proportion of GDP is not the highest in history. The chancellor’s own Office for Budget Responsibility forecast that the UK national debt will rise to a peak of 70.3% of GDP in 2013-14, before falling to 67.4% in 2015-16. The UK National Debt was greater than this from 1916 to 1969 – over half the 20th century. That is not to say having lower debt isn’t fiscally prudent: it is. However, there is more room for manoeuvre than the current chancellor wants us to believe.”