By Beth Rigby

We’ve heard that the business council will be announced later today, a body of the great and good to advise David Cameron. It will meet four times a year and there will be 20 business leaders from sectors that are “strategically important to the UK”. A list of some members is below — some of the more well known names include Sir James Dyson and Justin King of J Sainsbury.

But will it be little more than a talking shop? (Just think of Gordon Brown’s Business Council for Britain.) My source says the idea is that business will provide high level advice on business and economic matters in the UK, while the PM is also keen on setting up smaller advisory groups as part of his efforts to make sure each minister and department across business are listening and talking to business. Let’s see if it works.

Here’s the list so far:

Congratulations are in order for Chris Huhne. We’ve heard he has provisionally settled the energy department budget, winning him a place on the so-called “star chamber”.

This makes him the first Lib Dem spending department ministers to join the “Public Expenditure Committee”, the cabinet appeals court for the spending review. He attended his first meeting today, sitting alongside other “high achievers” such as Eric “thrifty” Pickles and Caroline Spelman. Six departments in total have now provisionally settled.

George Osborne was particularly keen to fast-track Huhne in order to balance out the star chamber, which was beginning to look a bit Tory heavy. Until now the only Lib Dem member was Danny Alexander, the Treasury chief secretary, who’s supposed to be in charge of putting the case for the prosecution. As one Whitehall official put it to me, there was a danger it would look like “Tories beating up on Lib Dems”.

Huhne’s settlement covers resource spending, rather than capital. While it is an achievement, it does not mean the battle is over. Some details have still to be nailed down and there are plenty of contentious issues in the energy department capital budget that may still go to the wire. This is progress for the Treasury, but there are some rather important loose ends to sort out, and not much time left.

Eric Pickles’ has launched another offensive in his long war against excess and frivolity in Whitehall.

Reams of spending data has been published for 2008 showing how his department allegedly lived it up in the pre-Pickles era.

You may remember that the last batch of numbers for 2009 exposed lots of officials spending time at race courses and plush hotels (something they insist were for boring conferences and legitimate work purposes).

Well, we haven’t looked through all the 2008 numbers, but someone has pointed us towards a few gems:

– The Audit Commission spent £13,000 at London Zoo and £16,000 at Newbury racecourse. Presumably conferences but I doubt any folk in Whitehall will be taking that presentational risk again.

– The DCLG spent £1,200 at the “All Star Bowling Alley”. Fun I’m sure. But for Thrifty Eric that is definitely a strike out.

There are various other items — including £180,000 for press clippings and millions of pounds on polling and PR — that are questionable. Some of it will probably have a reasonable and sensible explanation. But the crusade against waste will not be lost on officials.

We particularly enjoyed Pickles’ new plan to turn down the heating in his department to save some pennies. It reminds me of Jimmy Carter’s call for sacrifice during the energy crisis, a piece of political theatre many Americans find hard to forget.

Sitting by the fireside in a woolly beige cardigan, he said: “All of us must learn to waste less energy. Simply by keeping our thermostats, for instance, at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night we could save half the current shortage of natural gas.”

Wouldn’t you like to hear Pickles giving the same cost-savings tips to the nation in a woolly jumper?