What would you cut, Mr Cameron?

David

Amazingly, this was precisely what Daniel Finklestein was going on about......

Still, now we have all this as you've wanted, it's great to see our poll ratings shoot up. Er, hang on....

TrevorsDen

ID cards?

Savings in recruitment costs

Reduction in manpower over time?

Doing more with less.

How much do quangos cost. Do we need NICE?

When will you dopes stop looking through the wrong end of the telescope.
Its not how on earth could we manage with less, but why the hell does doing what we do cost so much?

The plain fact is cutting govt spending - once the genie is out of the bottle - is difficult which is why Cameron has been wise to limit expectations. This crisis forces an honest politicians hand, which is wht Brown dissembles so.

William Blake's Ghost

I think Fraser Nelson is being a bit previous.

Does he really think Cameron is going to be foolish enough to make scattergun commitments to cuts without assessing all the available information sources about public spending?

If Brown actually allowed Cameron and his shadow cabinet to speak to the Civil Service (as is their right) they might be able to start giving us some idea.

Once again Brown's obstruction and political mendacity is at the bottom of the issue.

Cameron is right not to commit until he has his ducks in a row or until an election is imminent!

On your postscript I think you could be right. Gordon 'Moses' Brown may well be leading Britain into the wilderness for 40 years.

Forlornehope

Regional assemblies, identity cards, NHS computer systems, aircraft carriers (and the Joint Combat Aircraft), Trident replacement and a 10% across the board cut in the number of administrative public service employees. How about that for a start?

John Adlington

Cutting back on government expenditure is the elephant in the room that nobody cares to mention. And what is more, even without the current difficulties we face we would do well to cut, cut and cut again. The people who would be thrown out of work would not be the nurses, teachers and police, they would be the quangocracy, the stiflers, the snoopers, the instruments of the nanny state.

GJTory

Very well put Fraser.

Any chance that the term 'public spending' is being widened to include paying off debt?

Anthony

Bloody hell!! How many times does it need saying? If you ain't got any money then you're incredibly stupid to borrow any, because you can't pay it back.

Short the UK

Fraser,

In a possible 'secondary banking crisis' do you mean if house prices keep falling the likes of HBoS will be stuffed? Or do you mean that RBS which has a £2 trillion balance sheet and just lost £400m to Madoff, will blow up? Hester has got to be the most important man in UK plc right now - its like he has gone into a nuclear reactor that is in meltdown.

As we are heading into a depression most of the globe is going to implode at the same time. The quicker we get to ZIRP the better. The 30yr. T-Bill went under 3% yesterday.

It is all very depressing...

Chuck Unsworth

Real Terms NHS spending might be achieved by firing the many excruciatingly expensive 'consultants' and using some of the cash saved on the NHS. Indeed there are sound arguments for taking much outsourced work back in house - cleaning, budgeting, managing etc. It's generally accepted that hospitals were better run and cleaner when the heirarchy of Sister and Matron patrolled their hospitals.

C Powell

Your last sentence is exactly right. And it is pure fantasy to imagine that there are not lots of areas which can - and should be - cut. Just look at all those agencies/quangos/govt. bodies advertising in the Guardian every week. That should give a clue plus look at the previous posts where I and I other Coffee Housers have made suggestions about whole areas of Government spending which should be cut.

At the moment - and this is the key point - Government spending is continuing to grow, even if at a slower rate when people and companies are actually cutting back. This is unsustainable, politically and economically.

If the Tories won't address this issue then it will be the IMF which will force it onto us.

Verity

Neither side will address cutting expenditure in the vast public sector because they all have votes.

Disenfranchise anyone who makes his living out of the taxpayer and then have another look. These people don't need a vote on how money produced by wealth creators is deployed.

Get rid of the parasite vote. No representation without taxation. Once the "need" to cater to this sector has been removed, we can address the issues of public expenditure with a clear head.

John Littlerichard

Forlornhope: If we scrap Trident, how are we going to nuke China? Are you seriously suggesting we should lose that capability? I'm no war-monger, but the thought of those inscrutable-yet-blood-thirsty tykes raping our women and forcing us to eat birds nest soup makes me want to puke.

BrianSJ

The Taxpayers Alliance and Burning Our Money will have a list, I'm sure, as will the Adam Smith Institute and Reform. The crunch was that Brown overruled Bliar about 'no spending without reform'. The way to achieve less spending is wholesale reform, rather than just cuts. DC gets this as shown in his CPS speech of a while back. It can't just be doing less of the same nonsense.

True Bred Pomponian

As TrevorsDen puts it, decide what government should do and staff/budget up to that level. Inexplicably government will cost about a third of what it costs now. Some of us have been doing this stuff in the private sector since we started working in 1982.

Ian Campbell

If Cameron has any sense he will answer this type of question with "we will radically alter the incentives to work and enterprise". And then say that what this means will be revealed in the election campaign - and spend the available time drawing up radical plans - that can be justified by the crisis of dslump/depression and 5m actual unemployed.

King Prawn

How about:

1. getting rid of the ludicrous tax credit system which annually overspends by over £1bn;

2. getting rid of the Children's Trust Fund (which will become known as the State-Sponsored Pub Crawl) saving £280m a year;

c. as Forlornehope states cutting public service employees. The Guardian is still printing loads of adverts for public sector jobs. The worst being £70k to be paid to a 'Human Rights Lecturer' by a local council.Do the residents of that council really need a Human Rights Lecturer;

d. cutting maintenance expediture. A friend of mine is doing work for the NHS and gave a quote on the renewal of some lights. The NHS Trust specifically asked for lights that cost £10k even though he could have got similar lights costing £2k. Waste such as that has got to be ended!

The big cuts should be to the public service payroll. Another friend of mine worked at Centrepoint for the Dept. Of Education. They cut the personnel in the Department by one half and there were still people in the department sitting there doing nothing. She has now left that site and now works for a local council where she works with a man who was employed for a job that he was not qualified for and instead of being sacked was moved to another job (for which he is not qualified for).

Mark

First you list what you won't cut (e.g. front-line NHS staff levels) and then see what's not on the list (lots, as others have noted). That's where you cut.
Plus a freeze on public sector pay until the government's books aer balanced and no more final salary pensions for new state employees.
This government has been spending money without restraint - the new Ministry of Justice refurbishment has cost over £100 million.
What Cameron needs is a list of large numbers like that (and the billions on ID cards, NHS computer systems that don't work, etc.)
It will be hard work. An extra minister in each department whose only function is to see what could be cut would be a good idea, with no extra cost by sharing out the existing ministerial salaries.

M Jones

Tory savings in the past have meant slash and burn for vital public services and they will again, making the recession a social disaster zone for millions. Savings on ID cards and Whitehall paper pushers will amount to peanuts as has always been the case under successive governments.

strapworld

Mr Nelson. Why are you so juvenile at times?

Do you expect Cameron to say exactly where and what he would cut? He cannot at this time, and well you know.

You, like all your kind, are desperate in your attempts to be seen as keeping on both sides of the fence. be careful as people may get rather put off by these ramblings.

Cameron should just do a Boris and promise to have a root and branch audit on ALL government spending.

Then promise to publish the audit and to bring charges against any former minister -including the Prime Minister- if possible crimes are discovered!

I am not alone in believeing that something totally evil is at the heart of this administration and I am of the opinion that includes unlawful acts.

GeoffH

The WRAP quango costs £35m a year.

Scrap at least 100 quangoes and all the other suggestions up above and soon, you're talking tens of billions a year.

It's not that difficult. Just requires some political will.

It's been done before.

Nicholas

King Prawn is more on the case than the ridiculous and quite possibly trolling "M Jones".

Tory savings are a realistic alternative to ghastly Labour past, present and let's sincerely hope not future.

David

"No representation without taxation"

Right, since everyone pays VAT, that'll mean everyone has the vote. Next?

Fraser Nelson

David, what I "wanted" in that cover piece I wrote a while ago was nominal freeze and real-terms cut in spending - given that it will take five years to get the tax haul back up to where it was last year.

Strapworld, I dont expect him to lay it out yet. The "what would he cut" was an aside: my point is that Brown is tightening spending growth so much that there isnt much difference between Tory and Labour projections. As I see it, the choice is between real terms budget cuts or massive debt. There isnt a third way here, not one that is meaningful.

As TrevorsDen says, there is much scope to cut. And I do have a feeling that events will overtake us.

C Powell

Verity: I've asked you before and you didn't answer. Perhaps you will this time. Soldiers make their living from the taxpayer. Are you saying that they should lose the vote?

oldtimer

There is no sensible way to define "cuts" right now. That can only be done after the Conservatives have had access to the data - something at present denied by Brown.

When the time for the next government arrives, the chances are that the economic situation will be even more dire than it is now. Any statements of intent or assumptions made now are worthless.

Needs must when the devil drives, as anyone who has had to cope with the reality of a recession knows. Some difficult and brutal decisions will be required, whoever is in power. What will matter is whether they possess the gumption to cope.

Athesius the Facilitator

Oldtimer is right again. But whatever it is the Tory's cut they can't tell anyone anything because it will be twisted into something else and then sprayed over the population by the supine media.
I would start my cuts with the quangocracy such as RDAs then ID cards, Nice, NHS direct, revise the barnett formula, revise EU payment, reduce overseas aid, stop contracts in the civil service, get rid of many IT projects including NHS computor system, cut welfare spending (big time and no holds barred with welfare). Reduce civil service (I am one and I know from the inside). We are wasting billions. Feely touchy would be out the window with me. But after watching Ed Balls statement on the Parliamentry channel (reference sats fiasco)he would be the first to go. What a "sap" that man is.

Hysteria

erm - to be specific - what is our national interest in overseas aid? especially to countries larger/better-off than oursleves (China? India?)

hadrian

There's always the option of reucing the absurd prison population by reintroducing corporal and capital punishment, for a start. How about properly patrolling our borders and shutting them off to all illegal immigrants and squeezing all immigration?
How about disentangling ourselves from an illegal, bloody and ultimately futile war?
And as your Postscript is very much a running certainty how about doing the unthinkable and reviewing how we provide Health Care and Education in this country? Perhaps by scaling down the ridiculous mushrooming of 'university' ( laughably so called) education, especially dumbed down, useless arts and social science courses? Return the Arts to the genuinely academic and those with the leisure and desire to enjoy courses?
Government is bloated and needs radical scaling down that requires vision to achieve it gradually and as painlessly as possible.

skooch

Fraser -

I've posted 3 times today (trying to catch everybody up!) about the fact that some other, more quasi-political people need to be used/employed/drummed up onto the air waves to get these things into the public's head. Must be loads of them (not tainted by the Bullingdon question, the Toff question) that can be utilised in the media.

Cameron is at his best, his most endearing to the middling voters, when tackling the 'hang a banker' approach. He's at his most vulnerable when he goes head to head with hard-nut economic realities. Most vulnerable, then, to spin from gov and most vulnerable, then, to missunderstanding by an economically illiterate electorate.

When I ask people what they think about Cameron in general, I get a good response; narrow it down to an economic specific, and they default to Brown, even though they often express near hatred of his politics (maybe his politicking).

You lot, and us lot (to a much lesser degree) suffer from a too-intimate knowledge of the machinations of the political 'thing'. Simply because you're (we're) sufficiently interested in it to become submerged. It becomes about the technicalities, not the broader picture.

Got to look at the whole.

Fido Hound

C Powell: I think you could argue servicemen are sui generis: the government makes a decision that could lead them to applying or suffering lethal force; and the oath to the sovereign makes us explicitly servants of the Crown, not the state, unlike nurses, etc.

Of course, if we returned to proper campaigning, and reduced the national army to a cadre, and allowed landowners to raise their own militia, we wouldn't need the state to pay soldiers: the squires would pay them, and they could keep any booty.

Sadly, we now have to declare 'trophies' - even e.g. an AKM with a street value of about £50 - if we wish to commemorate our exploits in far-off countries.

CPowell

Fido Hound: servicemen may be sui generis. But what about a nurse or a doctor or a care worker looking after an Alzheimer's patient or those looking after disabled children or policemen or ambulancemen? Why should they be deprived of the vote because they get their income from the state. There are plenty of people who work in jobs because they want to do something for others - and this is, or should be, an honourable vocation - and it is quite wrong to say that just because they form part of the public sector somehow they are parasites and should not have the vote.

By all means let's have a genuine debate about the size and scope of the public sector and eliminate the non-jobs which exist only for the benefit of the bureaucrats themselves but to come out with statements such as Verity's is just silly and thoughtless.

R Mason

some suggestions:
Abolish quangos.
Abolish charges for car tax and load it all on petrol.
Abolish educational grants, loans, LEAS, etc. and pay it all by vouchers.
Conslidate all able bodied benefits to just two, a flat rate, taxable, non mean tested, time limited unemployment allowance to replace all other benefits.
Limit child allowance to a single, flat rate, paid on the youngest child only, child benefit of 5/6k for the over 18s only. Teenage mothers to mother and child homes.
A flat rate, universal, non-mean tested, taxable pension fora ll over 65 adjusted for age at retirement.
Introduce a flat tax of 30% and raise the tax threhold to 10 or 12 k.

I could go on, but that'll do for now.