It may be time for a collective mea culpa from the media

Matthew Parris offers Another Voice

It so happened that last Friday, before my partner and I set off from Derbyshire for the Lib Dem conference in Liverpool, he drove over to Cannock, to report a meeting called to discuss the consequences for South Staffordshire of looming spending cuts. He (his name is Julian Glover) writes for the Guardian and wanted to describe the meeting for his column that Monday. This, inter alia, was what he wrote:

‘Education spending in Staffordshire this year is £805 million, or £4,078 per pupil — 63 per cent up on the level of 2003 to 2004. In just three years, South Staffordshire Primary Care Trust’s resources limit has risen from £663 million to £888 million: up 44 per cent.’

Great Scot. Is that typical? I’ve had — for years — the vague feeling that public spending was edging inexorably upwards under the last government, and often heard people suggesting as much. But the sheer scale of the increases has, I confess, quite passed me by. Gordon Brown’s self-proclaimed prudence during the early years (when he was sticking to Tory spending plans) had lodged itself in my imagination; all the talk of the ‘Iron Chancellor’, along with his grumpy demeanour and his constant references to his ‘Presbyterian’ rigour, must have lulled many, like me, into a false sense of financial security.

Before the crash I only recall writing twice on the subject of Treasury profligacy: once in 2002, when Gordon Brown suddenly threw 50 per cent more money at a startled health service: ‘This,’ I wrote in the Times, ‘is an epoch-defining blunder, and nobody is listening.’ I began the column by predicting that to oppose this massive increase in public spending would be all out of tune with the spirit of the times, and my column would sink without without trace or comment.