Introduction: A sorry state of affairs
Recently I was day-dreaming about what I might write on the subject of the first ten years of a Conservative government, if it happens, of course, and if I’m still around in 2020. So here goes, but just in case some eager Labour party researcher spots this, these are mine and no one else’s musings and they are only that!
Taking power for the first time in 13 years, the Conservative government had its work cut out. First of all we had the attitude that we wanted a society built on freedom, responsibility and aspiration. Our aim, our commitment was nothing less than balancing the budget during our mandate. With Public Sector Borrowing Requirement at £175 billion and the deficit running to £848.5bn as of January 2010, the financial outlook was bleak. Our deficit was equivalent to 59.9% of total national output and we were determined to undo the damage New Labour had inflicted on our economy and our communities. The main task facing our new government was how to neutralise the risk of both the IMF and Moody’s downgrading our AAA credit rating and the associated devaluation of sterling. Alistair Darling ignored the demands to cut more, and faster, and so it was up to the new chancellor to grab the bull by horns. It was never going to be easy, but with swift and decisive implementation of the right policies in the right places, we were confident that we could bring about a fundamental change in the way we spent taxpayers’ hard earned cash, and the way this country was governed for the better.
Cutting back the public sector – the battle for Britain’s soul
The first thing the new Conservative government had to do was come clean with voters and publicly acknowledge that the public sector had become a great, greedy and financially unsustainable monster. Basic economics dictates that you cannot have less and less people in the private sector labouring under a huge financial burden to pay for the sky-high salaries, gold plated pensions and bloated administrations across the public sector from Whitehall to Town Halls. Therefore we held an emergency Budget within 50 days of taking office to set out a credible plan to eliminate in large part the structural current budget deficit over a Parliament. This led to the first step we took towards taming the public sector which was a progressive reduction in the deficit by freezing and reducing budgets. This was only implemented in 2011/12 so as to make sure that the economic recovery was cemented before spending was cut back. We insisted that Permanent Secretaries delivered the same level of frontline services whilst dramatically reducing costs by an overriding insistence on efficiency savings. IT projects were scaled back and projects piloted properly, back office functions shared and above all, complexity, particularly in benefits, reduced. As complexity reduced error and fraud was contained.
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