The cuts in Balls's budget
Fraser Nelson 5:28pm
Ed Balls says he hopes there will never be education cuts under Labour – but I have some rather bad news for him. His department has calculated the effects of Gordon Brown’s plans to suck forward spending pre-election, and helpfully published the results in a pdf file (here). It says that spending per pupil peaks this year at £6,110. It starts to fall next year, by £50 a head – a small cut, but a cut nonetheless. The Brown strategy was to spend pre-election as much as he could: it stands to reason that cuts will follow. So it is time, too, for Balls to come clean. He should stop pretending there will be no school cuts, and accept the only question is how deep these cuts should be.
Now, Balls may spin that these aren't spending cuts but simply the unwinding of spending being brought forward. Yet this is what debt does: robs from tomorrow, to pay for today. You can argue that the last nine years have been ‘bringing spending forward’ – the last time Brown balanced his budget was 2000/01. The cuts after the election will be needed because of Brown’s spending and his debt. And, though Balls may hate to admit it, those cuts will start hitting schools as of the next financial year.
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Sir Graphus
June 22nd, 2009 5:55pm Report this commentIf the cuts are taken entirely at LEA level, rather than by schools, then things will improve, rather than get worse.
However, cuts to services are an essential part of budget negotiation over cuts; never admit a cut can be taken without inflicting pain on the cutter. It's an extrapolation of Parkinson's Law that means that administrative costs will always grow, while services will always suffer.
paul
June 22nd, 2009 6:09pm Report this commentKeep at it Fraser. I also think a consistent theme or brand, ie "the big lie" is also helpful to hammer home the truth, in the way that Brown hammers away at his points
Jim
June 22nd, 2009 6:21pm Report this commentI think they could cut it a lot more. It seems to me most teachers are involved in teaching social engineering today. It would be better to scrap the whole national curriculum, adopt the International Baccalaureate, get some good teachers to make DVD's of the lessons, then give them to the kids. You could get rid of pretty much most of the current teaching staff.
As the financial crisis morphs into a food and energy crisis it will probably have to happen. You could probably cut the education budget by 60% and improve education that way.
Simon Stephenson
June 22nd, 2009 6:45pm Report this comment"You can argue that the last nine years have been ‘bringing spending forward’"
This is what the last 15 - 20 years has been all about - not just in government spending. The only way that 2 + 2 can consistently be made to equal 5 is to devise a method to inflate the worth of the present by underaccruing for costs in the future. In a nutshell, it is this sleight of hand, and the inability to disguise it any more, that brought on the financial crisis we are in. Far too much "value" in the present because we haven't been consolidating in camouflaged costs in the future.
The lamentable result of all this is that all this false wealth has sucked resources into the wrong things - had proper accruals been made the clear advantage would have been to invest resource elsewhere.
The unpicking and reallocation of all this misplaced resource is the task no government seems to be to anxious to take on.
mitch
June 22nd, 2009 6:48pm Report this commentThe ironic thing is balls probably told brown to run up all that debt with his neo endogenous growth rubbish and these particular chickens will come home to roost on his watch,if it wasn't so important it would be funny.
Tiberius
June 22nd, 2009 9:00pm Report this commentIs there not a case that it was Ken Clarke who balanced the 2000/01 budget because Brown's caveman economics hadn't yet kicked in?
HJ
June 22nd, 2009 10:25pm Report this commentFraser,
You're right, of course, but you really can't expect Balls to understand - he really doesn't understand numbers, budgets, basic economics, that sort of thing. All a bit too complex for him.
Leave the poor man alone.
perdix
June 22nd, 2009 11:26pm Report this commentSomeone needs to tell the British people that Brown's pre-election splurge is just his way of buying votes now with borrowed money, which they will have to pay for later.
Fergus Pickering
June 23rd, 2009 10:42am Report this commentJim, that is an amazingly SILLY post. Why not cut all those doctors and give everybody a DVD on self medication and how to cut your children up on the dining room table? Then we could cut the Army and give everybody a dvd on self-defence plus a free gun. Heavens, fellow, you're really onto something.
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