Francis Maude has come up with a genius money-saving wheeze. The only tiny downside is that it won’t kick in for another 10 years.
As the Telegraph reveals in Saturday morning’s splash, the Cabinet Office minister hopes to scrap the census – Britain’s official population count – in an attempt to save its £480m cost.
However, he admitted that next year’s census would still have to go ahead. He vowed instead to cancel the next official headcount – which will not occur until 2021.
To get to that point the Tories (or coalition) have to win the 2015 election and then the 2020 election. And still be in a cost-cutting mood. That’s a whole pyramid of ifs.
Mr Maude said the census was an expensive and inaccurate way of measuring how many people lived in Britain, given that 1.5m households failed to complete their forms in 2001. He said the government would prefer to count citizens more regularly using other databases.
The decision will be discussed at cabinet next week. Britain has had an official census every decade since 1801 with the only exception of 1941, during World War 2.
Jim Pickard
Kiran Stacey