Comment: We’re not doing our jobs properly
Scrutinising the spending review isn’t going according to plan. MPs and hacks in parliament need to up their game.
It’s been over two weeks since George Osborne unleashed the details of the comprehensive spending review on Britain.
It has previously been observed on this website that this is, to put it bluntly, a big deal. So big, in fact, that the measures contained within will shape our country’s future for the next five years and beyond.
Yet politicians and the media are yet to treat it with the gravity it deserves.
In the immediate aftermath of the spending review attention was focused on the Institute of Fiscal Studies’ (IFS) verdict. Was the CSR truly fair? Was it regressive? Headlines focused on deputy prime minister Nick Clegg’s attack against the IFS. This was an unprecedented move, but the focus on it made the story about process, not about the cuts themselves.
Last week saw concerns over housing benefit gather strength, as the full extent of the impact the coalition’s actions will wreak on social housing became clear. Again, the huge ruckus over whether the ‘cleansing’ rhetoric used by Labour politicians was appropriate saw the real issue swamped. It was not pushed to the sidelines – but the issue was debated through this filter, and diluted as a result.
This week tuition fees has, inevitably, become the headline. Attention has rightly shone on the Liberal Democrats’ uncomfortable position as they try to roll back from their pre-election pledge. But public debate about higher education funding has simply failed to convey the reason fees have to be hiked. The message hasn’t got across that sweeping cuts to university funding are transferring the burden from the taxpayer to the student.
Something is going wrong. Perhaps it is the opposition’s fault. Shadow chancellor Alan Johnson did a credible enough job attacking the spending review in broadbrush terms. He should equally acknowledge he did not provide the forensic, coruscating insights which George Osborne and co had become so adept at while in opposition. (Johnson has obviously not reached the end of his economics primer). When Labour have intervened they have done so in overblown language, diverting the issue. Ed Miliband’s team, we could conclude, need more time to get their act in order.
This is probably true. But, as MPs on the Treasury committee demonstrated this morning, it is not the whole story.
The chancellor spent two hours answering questions on the wide-ranging topic of the spending review. That summed up the nub of the problem: even in 120 minutes MPs failed to get under the skin of the review. The session lurched from aircraft carriers to local government to quantitative easing to child benefit… and on, and on, and on. John Mann took the scattergun approach to the extreme. “How many children as a result of what you’re doing will have to move?” he barked. “Will homelessness increase or decrease? Will there be any reduction for special educational needs in schools?” It was, simply, too much for Osborne to reasonably be expected to cope with. “We’re not getting answers from him,” Mann shouted angrily, as committee chair Andrew Tyrie moved on.
The problem is the comprehensive spending review appears too big, too overwhelming, too unwieldy to bear sustained analysis. But it shouldn’t be. Both politicians and journalists shouldn’t allow themselves to be distracted or sidetracked, as they are at the moment too easily.
We’ve spent the last two years working up to this moment. Ever since Alistair Darling delivered his game-changing Pre-Budget Report in late 2009 momentum has slowly been building towards the Tory pay-off, the grand moment when the forces of the right muster to wield the axe. October 20th was that moment. So now is the worst possible moment for those whose job it is to question and probe these decisions to falter.
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