George
Osborne has reached agreement with seven Whitehall departments on savings he
wants made in 2015.
The chancellor said he had found
20% of the £11.5bn he wants to cut spending by in the year from April 2015.
Justice, energy and communities are
among the departments agreeing to “significant savings”, he said, adding that
health, schools and foreign aid would be protected from cuts.
George Osborne announced this plan
to cut a certain percentage of government departments budgets some time ago and
today marks the first step on the way to achieving that, but the seven
departments that have settled on a budget accounts for only £2.3bn of the
£11.5bn needed to meet Osborne’s target.
He is still 80% short and so far hasn’t
reached a settlement with any of the big spending departments such as the MOD,
business, transport and the Home Office, so there is still a long, long way to
go.
One final thing why does this
government insist on protecting foreign aid spending, schools and the health
service absolutely, foreign aid doesn’t make much sense to me.
If you’re in a position to give
then you should, but when considering that the government is asking almost all departments
to cut a combined £11.5bn isn’t that a clear indicator that right now we’re not
really in a position to, and should stop for the time being until we are in a position
to do so in the future, wouldn’t that be the sensible thing to do?
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