Labour attacks Tory waste cuts
The Labour Party has stepped up efforts to discredit Conservative proposals for public spending, focusing on claims of savings identified by the James Review.
The Conservatives believe that they have identified £35 billion worth of savings in government expenditure, which they believe will allow the party to both raise the money spent on public services and cut taxes.
This afternoon Michael Howard has said that £23 billion will be ploughed back into frontline spending, with £8 billion kept in reserve and £4 billion used to finance tax cuts.
But, Labour’s general election co-ordinator Alun Milburn said today that the public would hear the Conservative proposals, look up and see a sky “full of flying pigs” and suggested that the headline figures involved “bogus and invented figures”.
And he said that billions of pounds in cuts would mean cuts in services and put at risk economic stability.
Transport Secretary Alistair Darling said that there was “no way” that cuts of this extent could be made without hitting frontline services, and claimed that the Tories have been guilty of double accounting.
He said: “Michael Howard admitted that the Tories had double counted £21 billion of savings identified by the Gershon review. What Mr Howard did not say was that this money has already been allocated by Labour to frontline services. This money is already included in each department’s plans for the next three years. Therefore the only way the Conservatives can use it for their priorities is to take it away from the frontline and make cuts to public services.
“The Conservatives are not only planning huge cuts. They are doing so on the basis of trying to spend the same money twice.”
Attack specific proposals contained in the James Report, for example the proposed outsouring of the driving theory test, Mr Darling said that it had already been outsourced. And he claimed that changes to the commissioning role for primary care trusts would save just a tenth of the £925million proposed.
He ridiculed savings attached to merging the Meat Hygiene Service with the Food Standards Agency, saying they were already merged. And he claimed savings made by scrapping the New Deal would be lost as the number of people unemployed and claiming benefits rose.
These allegations were though strongly denied by the Tories.
