Public services: Who is going to cut what?

The sharp reality of public financial planning has taken centre stage this week, with a fierce attack by the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies on all three parties' lack of clarity on public finances. The criticism also comes at the same time as England's largest local authority faces a huge bill to settle discrimination claims by female staff. Politicians' pronouncements about public sector cuts are, says the paper , a "huge barney over the immaterial", since no party has come clean on how it will reduce government borrowing. The spectacle, as the Guardian put it, was of "bald men squabbling over a comb". Conservative and Labour plans for spending cuts over the next parliament have still not been identified and the 74% of proposed Liberal Democrat cuts are still unclear. The IFS claims the Conservatives are planning the sharpest spending cuts since the second world war, while the other two parties' spending slowdowns, though not as sharp, amount to the biggest retrenchment since the International Monetary Fund crisis in the mid-1970s. But no party has gone "anywhere near" identifying the real cuts they will need to make, according to the IFS, making it impossible for voters to be able to make an informed choice in the general election. Professor Colin Talbot comments, in his Whitehall Watch blog , that "efficiency" has become a sort of Harry Potter magic wand which is being waved by all the main parties in the election in the hope that they can magically shrink the public sector deficit without any visible impact on services. "All parties should be clear that efficiencies will mean some job losses. And if the Tories main concern is jobs, as opposed to tax cuts, they need to look again at their plans," says Talbot. Other public managers agree. A former civil servant, commenting in today's Public special report on efficiency savings, says that because the political risk of spelling out cuts is too great, there is a danger that politicians will "hypnotise themselves and the electorate" into believing that efficiency savings alone will bridge the gap in public finances. "There is nothing so powerful as an illusion that suits everyone." It is ironic that at precisely this time of uncertainty about public sector finances, policies from the past should land a major public sector employer with a potential bill of £200m. The employment tribunal has found in favour of more than 4,000 female council workers employed by Birmingham city council in 49 different jobs, who were paid less than male colleagues doing equivalent jobs.