Politics

20 June 2009

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

George Osborne was in bed when he heard Andrew Lansley on breakfast radio last week discussing health spending. It was an unremarkable story about Labour’s budgets, with no hint of the political bombshell about to drop. The shadow health secretary was saying that the Tories would increase health spending — which is, of course, official party policy. But to pay for it, Mr Lansley announced matter-of-factly that all other departments under a Tory government would have to suffer a budget cut of about 10 per cent.

Suffice to say that Mr Osborne did not get much more sleep after that. Mr Lansley had not quoted an official party figure, but used a calculation first carried out by The Spectator to show what would happen if David Cameron were so unwise as to leave the bloated NHS budget intact. The Institute for Fiscal Studies had worked out that Alistair Darling’s Budget involves 7 per cent cuts over the three years to April 2014. Any party wishing to ring-fence health expenditure would have to visit 10 per cent cuts on other departments. Predictably, however, Gordon Brown decided to misrepresent this simple statement of fact as the exposé of a secret Tory plan.

For a decade or so, the Conservatives have had a clear drill when accused of planning spending cuts: run, hide and retract. Oliver Letwin went missing for days during the 2001 election campaign when Gordon Brown accused him of plotting to cut £20 billion from public spending. Howard Flight lost both his job and his seat for suggesting that Michael Howard would be more parsimonious in government than he was proposing in opposition. But this time Mr Osborne has said, clearly and simply, that he will indeed make cuts. So, for that matter, would Labour. But the Tories are at least being honest about it.

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