Gordon Brown has outlined plans to axe more than 100,000 civil service jobs across the UK. His spending review – which covers the period 2005/06 to 2007/08 – sets the priorities for Labour’s general election manifesto.
Spending is up – to £301.9bn next year, £340.5bn the following year and the same again the year after. As this year’s spending round is £279.3bn, the Chancellor described this as a rise of 4.2% in real terms over the period.
Cuts
Civil Service workers
Setting out his three year spending plans, he told MPs 84,150 jobs would go in England and a further 20,000 in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. He said the cuts, among other efficiency savings, would reduce costs by £21.5bn a year in public services. The cuts were described as being made possible by the government investments in technology over the past few years.
The merger of the Inland Revenue and Customs will shed 16,000 jobs, rather than the 14,000 originally anticipated – the Chancellor’s speech did not clarify whether these would be in addition to, or part of, the 104,000 cut in the review.
About 20,000 civil service jobs are to be relocated out of the south-east, with South Wales, Bristol, Yorkshire and East Kilbride already set to receive some of these.
Following Tesco’s and others, the Civil Service will also start to crack down on uncertified absences – plans are expected to be published shortly.
Property
The Chancellor set a goal of £30bn of Government assets to be dsposed of over the next 6 years – particularly in property and land.
Spending
Military
Unsurprisingly, the military get a large chunk of cash: a real terms rise of 1.4% for the Armed Forces, about £1bn for the Defence Modernisation Fund over the next four years. Costs of military operations are to be met from the Reserve. The Foreign Office’s budget goes up as well, to deal with the increasing demands parallel to those of the military.
Science and business
Government funding for science is to rise by 5.8% on average for the next four years – the funding is to be split between science teaching, graduate scientists/engineers, and supporting technology transfer and university-business link-ups.
The objective is to raise overall spending in Britain on R&D to 1.9% (amongst the lowest national spend of main competitors) to 2.5% of GDP within ten years.
Transport
There is to be around 4.5% real terms increase in the transport budget over the next three years – this will be spent on the rail reforms (to be announced later this month) amongst other things.
Housing
Again, no surprise here given the pressure on housing in the UK. The main announcement will come from the Deputy Prime Minister tomorrow, but the budget is to rise by 4.1% annually over the next three years.
In addition, a new £150m fund will be set up to finance infrastructure on new housing developments and to speed up planning. It is also intended to finance a 50% increase in social housing by 2008.
Regional Development Agencies
The RDAs are to get an additional £0.45bn between them over the next three years, with the intention of devolving decision-making further from Whitehall.
Social measures
Various funding intiatives were mentioned, including free books for children, a new National Offenders Management Service, extra funding for social services and an extension of free access to museums to cover university museums.
