Search Results for: devo

From the Financial Times Minimum wage rated top policy, say academics By Nicholas Timmins, Public Policy Editor Published: May 1 2011 What is the most successful policy of the past 30 years? Ask a bunch of political academics and their answer – perhaps surprisingly – is the minimum wage, followed by devolution, privatisation and the […]

Today’s report from the Public Administration Select Committee (see here and Press Release reproduced below) makes complete sense. It argues that as Ministers reduce the size of the House of Commons (from 650 down to 600 MPs) and devolve power (allegedly) away from Whitehall, there should be less need for so many Ministers and their […]

Andy Coulson may have gone, but the evidence of the spin-s dark arts at work permeates the Coalition government’s strategy. Before the election both Tories and Liberal Democrats made much of the fact they were going to be open and honest with voters about the effects of the cuts they were proposing (as opposed to […]

A colleague in local government tells me that I missed the front-loading of the local government cuts in SR2010.

If there is one word that sums up yesterday’s Spending Review it is insecurity. Today Britain is a much less secure place to be than it was yesterday, nationally, socially and individually. And by the time the Spending Review is implemented in full we will all be feeling much less secure – we really will […]

Next week at 12.30 GMT Chancellor George Osborne will rise in the House of Commons to present his Comprehensive Spending Review 2010. This will set out Departmental Spending Limits (DEL) for the fiscal years 2011-12 to 2014-15, and probably a lot more besides. What should we, and should we not, be looking for in CSR […]

My advice to the Labour leadership contenders – admit Labour will never win a General Election again. It’s not as painful as it sounds, because nor will the Tories. The age of one-Party rule is over, and the sooner Labour admits it the sooner they can develop a realistic strategy for government and for opposition. […]

The most obvious thing about today’s £6.2bn worth of cuts is the degree to which Whitehall departments have successfully ‘passed the parcel’ onto other parts of public services: local and devolved government, quangos, universities, private sector contractors and suppliers, and others will take the bulk of the pain.

A lot of media analysts and city commentators have been loosely talking about the forthcoming Budget ‘spelling out the cuts’ that were so obviously absent from the election campaign. It won’t. David Cameron has just confirmed in an interview on the Andrew Marr show that the Budget will only spell out the spending envelope for […]

The old anarchist slogan (above) always had a grain of truth in it – especially in Britain where our permanent civil service is very permanent indeed. As “Yes, Minister” so brilliantly satirised, Ministers come and go, but Sir Humphrey remains, immovable, unflappable and very much in charge – or at least a powerful force in […]