There is relatively little detail on where the cuts will come in various departments. But some blood is spilled on pages 109-110. This £5bn of additional savings comes from areas ranging from bus passes to cutting skills budgets. Here’s a selection:
– £1.4bn from withdrawing the “jobs guarantee” for young people from 2011
– £340m from ending the New Deal for Communities programme, which was launched in 1998 to help regeneration.
– £500m from scaling back the NHS IT programme and some other projects to take government into the information age
– £360m from a new round of prison privatisations and “reforms” of legal aid (lawyers: watch your wallets). My colleague has just discovered that some of these “underperforming” prisons are already in the private sector.
– £300m cuts to adult skills budgets in “low priority” areas that are not “vital to Britain’s future”. No examples yet.
– £600m hit to higher education and science and research budgets, particularly in budgets that do not support “student participation”
– £60m from raising the age threshold on subsidised public transport to match changes in the state pension age.
– A shocking £13m raid on the allowances of hard working diplomats (DISCLOSURE: I’m married to one)
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey