Please see today’s post over on Whitehall Watch about the new Departmental Business Plans, which are linked to SR2010.
Also, for BMAN students, please see the announcements section.
Author: Prof. Colin R Talbot
Professor of Government (Emeritus), University of Manchester
Visiting Fellow, University of Cambridge Judge Business School
Department Business Plans – new wine in old bottles?
The Coalition government has announced today (8 Nov 2010) a series of ‘Departmental Business Plans’, following up on the Spending Review announcements last month. These plans are supposed to be “revolutionary” in several ways. But this ‘revolution’ is more spin than substance, with much of what they are doing simply following in the footsteps of previous governments – Conservative as well as Labour. Continue reading “Department Business Plans – new wine in old bottles?”
Efficiency….not
Got to comment on the Public Accounts Committee (Parliament) report on failures in the efficiency programme, on the BBC Today programme here
Last item of the day.
University Fees and Muddled Motives
On this morning’s Today programme Education minister Michael Gove – reputedly a man of great intelligence – maintained that raising University tuition fees to nearly 3 times their current level for some Universities would have absolutely no effect on levels of applications from students from lower and middle income backgrounds. Continue reading “University Fees and Muddled Motives”
Front-loading services cuts, back-loading benefits cuts
After the post about the front loading of local government cuts I received this message from Carl Emmerson, the acting Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS): Continue reading “Front-loading services cuts, back-loading benefits cuts”
Finding previous Spending Reviews
Since the change of government, much of the content of the Treasury website has been taken down and archived – but finding it is not easy.
Below is a link that will take you here, to the archived Treasury webpages where you can find all the previous Spending Reviews. If that doesn’t work, copy and paste the link below into your browser:
I haven’t tried all the links to the previous Reviews, but the ones I have sampled all seem to work. If any don’t, please let me know as I’m pursuing this with HM Treasury and the National Archives as a serious practical breach of freedom of information. If you search for Spending Reviews on the Treasury or the National Archives website you can’t find them directly.
Front loading Local Government cuts?
A colleague in local government tells me that I missed the front-loading of the local government cuts in SR2010. Continue reading “Front loading Local Government cuts?”
Treasury Trips Up over Child Benefit
The Treasury and HMRC are apparently in turmoil over the attempt to impose a cut in Child Benefit for higher rate tax payers. Read this excellent piece by Iain Martin on the Wall Street Journal website. Who says “implementation” is a trivial matter?
Treasury Tricks
Gordon Brown was notorious as Chancellor for announcements that looked and sounded good on the day, only to unravel as theatrics and wheezes became apparent as experts got to examine the figures. He managed to turn ‘the devil is in the detail’ from a infrequently used aphorism into an Iron Law of Budgets. Continue reading “Treasury Tricks”
Plan B: Spending Review 2012
One question being constantly put to the Coalition government is what’s plan B? The Spending Review plans are massively ambitious not just in reducing public spending but also in setting out plans for most of public spending up to 2014-15. What happens if things change, or this doesn’t work? Continue reading “Plan B: Spending Review 2012”
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