Spending when money is tight
- 4 Mar 08, 12:49 PM
Today David Cameron announced that he was setting up a commission on restoring the Military Covenant between the armed forces and society as a whole.
Curiously he omitted a line from his prepared speech about Labour cutting defence spending. It's yet another sign that he is struggling to control the pressure coming from within his party to spend more and tax less.
A battalion of former generals and admirals argue that a big increase in defence spending will be needed when the Tories come to power. Privately many of his own MPs agree.
Earlier this week Cameron promised 5,000 more prison places but no extra spending. This followed, I'm told, a behind the scenes row about the need for more cash for more prison places and bobbies on the beat.
Last week his health spokesman stumbled into suggesting that there would be big increases in spending on the NHS.
In addition the Tories have made promises to cut inheritance tax, to cut tax for married couples and to cut stamp duty. It's far from clear that taxing non doms and cutting welfare bills will produce the necessary cash.
The Shadow Chancellor George Osborne is fighting hard to maintain discipline and to insist that no new spending pledges have been made.
The issue here is not whether this or that individual sum adds up. In truth, governments spend and waste many billions of pounds that they have not budgeted for in advance. Those old election time debates about whether the opposition's "sums add up" are usually sterile and breathtakingly dull for voters.
No, the issue's a much simpler one. How credible is it to give the impression that you'll do more on defence, law and order and tax cutting at a time when money is very, very tight? And if there's not more money to spend what will give?
One idea that sounds attractive is so-called alcohol disorder zones "designed to provide a short period of targeted activity in a very small number of areas to clean up the alcohol related problems which blight the lives of local residents". So says the Home Office.
