The Coalition's budget made deep and immediate cuts because A) when they came to power and opened the books things were far worse than they had imagined and B) Clegg had changed his mind in favour of them on the private advice of Mervyn King though he continued to argue publicly against them. Well, A wasn't true because "Sir Alan [Budd, Head of Osborne's new OBR] said yesterday that Alistair Darling was being too pessimistic: on almost every measure, the public finances look like being in better shape"[1] and B wasn't true because "King said today: "I said nothing that was not already in the public domain. In the telephone conversation I basically repeated what I had said at the press conference"[2]".
Well that's not very "new politics" is it? But what about the nature of those cuts?
Firstly and most obviously Michael Gove plans to scrap the Building Schools For The Future programme. If a school was getting a new building or even repairs or renovations of an existing one, it isn’t now. Even if he still claims that it is[3]. Education budgets will instead be spent on the rolling out of the Academies programme which was rushed through Parliament without the usual scrutiny because Gove invoked an extraordinary Parliamentary procedure which is normally reserved for emergency responses to catastrophic security threats[4]. Under this Act “Free schools” could be “set up by parents and private groups with state funding”. This legislation also allows schools to remove themselves from national standards of pay, national curriculum requirements and to introduce selective admissions policies. It also pledges to cut funding for failing schools and pump more money into schools with high success rates[5]. Admissions policies which guarantee higher rates of government funding for selective privately-owned schools? You can draw your own conclusions.
There are also Iain Duncan-Smith’s planned Welfare reforms which include having the Disability Living Allowance statuses (which are currently decided on the recommendation of GPs and specialists) overturned without scrutiny by unqualified civil servants and placing arbitrary caps on housing benefits for the poor which will lead to increased homelessness and destitution[6].
We also have the movement of the ludicrously wasteful funding of Trident from the Treasury to the Ministry of Defence which will see thousands of troops return from Afghanistan to redundancy. The MoD were already faced with 20% cuts and now have to fund this £130bn white elephant[7]. There are only so many ships and guns you can go without before you have to start throwing soldiers on the dole after all.
I’m aware that I have a tendency towards verbosity, so I’ll try and rush through a few more things before I stop making sense.
Other highlights are:
- A public sector pay-freeze which includes the lowest-paid (the £21,000 limit is pro-rata and hundreds of thousands of public sector workers are part-time) and contrasts with pay-rises in the private sector[8].
A VAT rise (which the LibDems expressly campaigned against) which hits the poor hardest since VAT is a regressive tax.
The scrapping of a free school meals programme for the poorest children.
Cutting of the rate of Corporation Tax- including for banks.
Shelving (rather than scrapping) the plans to cut Inheritance Tax rates for the very rich.
A refusal to remove the charitable status of private schools meaning that, in effect, they are subsidised by the very families who have seen a cut of £670m in the budget for state schools.
The imposition of the much-derided Labour proposal for a National Insurance increase but, significantly, only for employees and not employers.
And, finally, Health- the one area of public spending that the Tories pledged not to cut. Andrew Lansley (who is personally financed by a private healthcare provider [9]) has taken the 'ringfenced' NHS budget and- in spite of the Tories' pre-election calls for "no more top-down reorganisations"[10] put it towards a top-down reorganisation which will give GPs the task of managing their practices as well as working in them. As this is already a full-time job for thousands of public-sector workers, what this means in practice is that they will be made redundant and replaced by private healthcare providers. It is, in effect, a large-scale privatisation of PCTs paid for by the public for the benefit of private companies.
In conclusion then; the “New Politics” coalition have rushed through a sweeping programme of change which in essence hands money earmarked for schools and hospitals to private companies and have hit the poorest with tax rises while offering businesses and the very rich tax freezes and even a cut in taxation rates. That these seismic ideological changes are based upon lies and misinformation should really surprise no-one, though many LibDem voters will feel betrayed as their intention was (in many cases) to stop the Conservatives and avoid the kind of social carnage this will wreak across the country.
“New politics”? Only if you can’t remember the 1980s.
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7827761/This-Budget-is-George-Osbornes-moment-to-be-radical.html
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jul/28/mervyn-king-nick-clegg
[3] http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/Michael-Goves-Is-Forced-To-Apologise-For-Mistakes-On-Building-Schools-For-The-Future-Hit-List/Article/201007115660983?f=rss
[4] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/tories-use-terror-laws-to-rush-academies-bill-through-house-2030336.html
[5] http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23857439-michael-gove-hoping-to-push-through-academies-bill.do
[6] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/welfare-reforms-are-onslaught-on-the-vulnerable-2040855.html
[7] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/7920328/Armed-forces-stunned-by-Trident-bill.html
[8] http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-28/half-of-u-k-public-sector-pay-deals-ended-in-freeze-ids-says.html
[9] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/6989408/Andrew-Lansley-bankrolled-by-private-healthcare-provider.html
[10] http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2010/07/health-service-nhs-cameron
