Well, well, well. Rachel Reeves has spent much of her seven months in power banging on about budget blackholes and spending cuts, vowing to use the Treasury’s ongoing spending review to find more ways to cut costs. The Chancellor has asked government departments to find 5 per cent ‘efficiency savings’ to help set their budgets over the next few years. But when it comes to the specifics, the Labour lot have been rather, um, light on the detail.
Conservative MPs John Glen and Mike Wood submitted written questions to the government, quizzing Sir Keir Starmer’s army about exactly what non-essential spending cuts had been made by departments, with Wood requesting a breakdown of the estimated savings made from cancelled comms campaigns. Yet despite all the Chancellor’s big talk about balancing the books, Labour has refused to publish efficiency savings details. How very curious.
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones told Glen that 39 comms campaigns had been cancelled, while 46 continue with reduced budgets and another 46 aiming to reduce their spending costs by 25 per cent. But when Woods requested information about individual costs, the Cabinet Office clammed up. ‘The combined savings from these measures total £85 million in 2024-25 and up to £96 million in 2025-26,’ Labour’s Georgia Gould responded, adding: ‘There are currently no plans to publish this list in detail.’ So much for transparency, eh? It certainly raises questions about the credibility of all these savings claims in the first place…
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