The coalition should get its own house in order first

By Sarah Hayward / @sarah_hayward

The hectoring and lecturing of Local Government by largely Tory ministers (although Saint Vince was in on the act yesterday) seems to have reached fever pitch over the last few days. Presumably because they know that we’re now firmly in the budget setting period. Starting about a week ago up until the end of February every council in the country will publish their full costed plans for next year – April 2011 – March 2012.

The government knows full well that these budgets will include lists of painful cuts of front line services. Despite their claims to the contrary, the government knows full well that in many areas of the country* pretty much every type of service will be affected in some way – scaled back or cut altogether. The budgets will include this level of cuts because the government decided to cut local government deeper and faster than any other area of the public sector. Many councils will have to cut in excess of 20% of their budgets in the next three years.

The low level myth peddling has been going on for weeks – like Grant Shapps falsely claiming on authority employed a ‘Twitter Tsar’. And neither correcting it or apologising when he found out he was wrong. There are more examples.

But the worst, in my opinion, is the repeated claim by a procession of ministers of the last week or two that somehow councils can find the money – in many cases close to £100m – from ‘efficiencies’. Or in real language, without cutting front line services at all. It’s simply not possible. And government ministers know it – or if they don’t then they really shouldn’t be in their jobs.

In peddling this myth over the last week I’ve twice heard Francis Maude, Big Society Minister, claim that central Government is making mahoosive efficiency savings so councils should be able to do the same. He even puts a figure on it.

His grand proclomation, made towards the end of Thursday’s Question Time (about 50 min in) & repeated on yesterday’s Politics Show, was that central government is making a mahoossive £3.5bn of efficiencies this financial year alone.

£3.5bn is a huge some of money. Billions have nine zeros (it used to be 12 but they’re worth less these days, that’s inflation I guess). So, given us mere local councillors are supposed to take our lead from this mahoossive, mind bogglingly large saving, what propotion of the government’s annual budget is it? Perhaps it’s 10% maybe even as much as 15%. I mean he’s shouting about it so much that it must’ve been really stretching for the Sir Humphrey’s. They must’ve had to litterally leave no stone unturned and no light on for a minute longer than necessary.

Well, no. Government is spending about £620bn this year. So it’s not even 1%, infact it’s not even close to one percent. A £3.5bn saving is in fact 0.56%. Or what I guess treasury economists might be tempted to label a rounding error.

Councils up and down the country are making far greater savings from overheads before the cuts services. I’d urge Francis Maude to scrutinise some of those budget’s pretty closely, because it’s clear that he could learn a lot from the way we’re leading the way in saving money.

David Cameron used to recognise that local government was pretty efficient. He should stop swallowing the propaganda of Pickles, Maude et al and force his ministers to look a little harder a little closer to home to find savings. Get it up to just 1% this year Dave and that’s a helluva lot of sure starts and libraries kept open.

And Labour comrades, next time you’re on a show with these myth peddlers, can you please pull them up on it. Frankly, the saving central government is making is derisory and if they did a better job of it there’d be more money left for front line services like local government, health and the police.

*not all areas of the country because while deprived areas like Hackney, Camden and Liverpool were hit with cuts of over 20% in three years, some areas, coincidentally mainly Tory, got off rather lightly. With one council, Dorset, actually receiving a small increase in their grant.