Category Archives: Politics

Britain, Economic, Government, Politics

UK Government Spending Plans 2015-16…

SECOND SPENDING REVIEW

The Chancellor, George Osborne MP, will unveil his second spending review tomorrow when he will set out spending plans for 2015-16.

Mr Osborne’s problem is that this is the review he never wanted to deliver. The original plan was that the deficit would be under control in time for the election with no more cuts needed. Weak growth and lower tax receipts have blown that plan out of the water.

The result is that Mr Osborne will be announcing more deep cuts to public services. That is a given. And to put the scale of those cuts into perspective they will be, if anything, a little deeper than the average cuts experienced each year during this parliament.

For a number of key areas of public spending, including the Home Office, Ministry of Justice and the Department for the Environment, this will mean cuts of more than 30 per cent since 2010.

By any standards those are large budgetary chunks to be dispensing with. The question that many will be asking is why the cuts needed are so big? The scale of these cuts cannot be explained by deficit cutting alone. For the remarkable fact is that total government spending is not falling at all.

Some bits of spending are continuing to rise, while others are not falling – due to debt interest payments rising as debt levels continue their upward trend. Public service pensions are also rising, with state pensions, the NHS and schools ‘ring-fenced’.

In effect, this means that all of the strain is being taken by a limited range of areas. That is why cuts in defence, police, justice, local government, and welfare have been so deep already. And it is for this reason that further deep cuts will be a priority for a Chancellor anxious to balance the books.

We have already been told that this pattern will continue. Health and pensions will again be protected. The longer these two budgets are left untouched the greater the pain that others will feel.

Unless the Government can deliver some truly surprising plans for health, pensions or social security, most other government departments can expect cuts averaging around 8 per cent in 2015-16 – a big cut in any year but all the more so in being layered on top of what has already happened.

There are some in Whitehall, though, feeling rather emboldened by their success so far. Not only have all of the planned cuts actually happened, but in many areas there has been over delivery.

Government budgets were significantly under-spent last year even in the face of extremely tight plans. And so far at least the budget cuts have not provoked visible crises or the sort of public demonstrations and backlashes seen in some other countries.

Equally, it is not surprising that gaining agreement with all Cabinet ministers for a further tightening of the screw in their departments has not been easy. We have been told that all departments have settled, and know that the small ones, on average, have settled for the required 8 per cent cut.

But we are yet to get the details of some big and very difficult departments – education, local government and business among them. Decisions here will make big differences.

Within education it is only schools that are protected. Other services for children and young people could lose out.

The business department – which pays for skills, training, universities and research – has made the case that its spending is uniquely important for growth.

Local government spending has been squeezed hard already and ministers have expressed concern about the effects of a further squeeze on vital social care services.

But even after all that, tomorrow’s spending review will only raise the curtain on at least another two years of tough choices. For much more extensive cuts will be needed if the deficit is to be dealt with in the planned time horizon.

Unless, of course, the next government chooses to raise taxes, or gets fortuitous with an unexpectedly-strong economic upturn.

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Government, Politics, Scotland

Police Scotland: ‘Computer revamp hits £45m’…

SCOTLAND’s unitary police force is facing a fresh crisis after it emerged that the budget for a crime-fighting computer project has almost quadrupled to £45 million.

Earlier this year it was disclosed that Police Scotland is using eight separate IT databases from the former regional system.

The systems, though, are incompatible with each other, despite the merger of Scottish Police forces into a single force on April 1.

This has led to warnings that criminals may escape detection because of poor sharing of intelligence.

At First Minister’s Questions, yesterday, at Holyrood in Edinburgh, Alex Salmond said the cost of replacing the police computer network is estimated to be £45 million over a decade.

The Scottish Government had originally estimated that integrating the systems of the old eight forces would initially cost £12 million over three years.

Lewis Macdonald, the justice spokesman for Labour, said that public faith is dwindling fast following one calamity after another for the new police service.

It has been revealed that police have been privately briefing for two years that integration would cost £45 million. The Scottish Police Authority (SPA), the body set up to oversee the new force, made the revelation. The true figure was only made public yesterday at First Minister’s Questions.

Information and communications technology (ICT) integration has been described as Police Scotland’s priority but critics fear the Scottish Parliament’s scrutiny of ICT has been downgraded following the resignation of three senior SPA executives, events that have prompted claims of a leadership crisis.

Mr Salmond insists the resignations ‘will have no impact’ on ICT integration because the SPA’s chief information officer remains in post. The First Minister said the ‘proposal for the acquisition of the single ICT system to cover recording, management, analysis of data and crime, vulnerable persons, criminal justice and custody, missing persons and property is a major advance’.

The First Minister added:

… Discussions with the SPA indicate the estimated total cost of £45 million over ten years is affordable within their existing budget.

Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) have previously heard the present ‘hamfisted’ IT network still relies on outdated floppy discs, does not comply with police regulations and leave officers open to criticism if a prisoner dies in custody.

South Scotland Labour MSP Graeme Pearson, a member of Holyrood’s justice committee, said:

… This is the first time this number has been brought to light and brings to a conclusion the ambiguity that has existed up to now about the cost and the likely way forward for the service; £12 million was the Government’s guess and it was obviously an unreasonable figure.

Mr Pearson also said that a highly publicised ‘turf war’ between Police Scotland and the SPA over division of power at the top of the new service has been resolved. He added:

… Many of the major government issues have been reallocated so that Police Scotland will be in charge of human resources, finance and corporate services… The SPA will do what it was designed to do: utilise governance and accountability by watching the way the service delivers according to the strategy. Until now, the SPA deemed it would be responsible for all support staff, all ICT, be the accountable officers for finance and human resources and so forth.

Holyrood’s justice sub-committee on policing will question SPA chairman Vic Emery and Police Scotland chief constable Sir Stephen House on the SPA resignations. That meeting will take place next Thursday. An SPA spokesman said the papers for the next SPA meeting on Wednesday would include details of the revised ICT strategy.

The SPA further added that the £12 million was only a theoretical figure that existed in a Government document. It says there is ‘no ring-fenced sum’ in its capital budget purely for technology.

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Afghanistan, Britain, Government, Politics, United States

The United States and Britain hold peace talks with the Taliban…

The UK has announced it is set to join peace talks with the Taliban to bring an end to the 12-year conflict in Afghanistan that has cost more than 400 British lives.

Washington announced earlier this week that negotiations with the Taliban will begin as early as today in the Gulf state of Qatar.

David Cameron gave his backing to the peace plan and revealed that the UK has been ‘fully engaged’ in the process for some time.

A number of Conservative MPs warn the talks could lead to a sell-out that hands southern Afghanistan back to the militants who have killed 444 British servicemen since 2001. It has also emerged that Taliban fighters are likely to be released as a ‘confidence-building measure’ as part of the talks.

It is understood that British intelligence officers have been conducting secret negotiations with the Taliban for the past two years to help pave the way for the talks. Intelligence agents and diplomats are likely to join in if the initial exchanges suggest that a deal can be done.

Under the terms of the arrangement, the Taliban has vowed to break its links with Al-Qaeda terrorists in exchange for a role in running Afghanistan when Western combat troops withdraw at the end of next year.

The announcement was made immediately after NATO handed over control for combat operations to Afghan security forces in every region of the country.

The talks in the Qatari capital, Doha, where the Taliban has opened an office, may also include representatives of the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai.

While the US will have its first formal meeting with the Taliban in several years, it is expected that will be quickly followed up by a meeting between the Taliban and the High Peace Council – the structure that President Karzai has set up for talks of this nature.

The initial meeting with the Taliban is likely to be an ‘exchange of agendas’ in which both sides lay out what issues they want addressed. Prisoner exchanges will be one topic for discussion.

MI6 officers have been engaged on and off for more than two years in an attempt to get Afghans to talk to each other. The intelligence service believes this will lead to a positive outcome.

Mr Cameron has acknowledged that the talks would be ‘difficult’ for many people to accept, but he said we need to match the security response in Afghanistan with a political process to try and make sure that as many people as possible give up violence and join the political process.

The Prime Minister said that we should be very proud of what our Armed Forces have done because the proportion of terror plots against Britain emanating from Afghanistan has ‘radically reduced’ since 2001.

Conservative MP Bob Stewart, who commanded British Forces in Bosnia, has warned that the Taliban holds the ‘whip hand’ and negotiators need to ‘get the talks right’ or British service people would have ‘died in vain.’

General Khodaidad of Afghanistan, the former counter-narcotics minister, said the country’s armed forces would need to be able to prevent the return of Taliban control in the south, including Helmand province where British troops have been fighting.

Khodaidad says that the Afghan National Army will not be able to control Afghanistan for the long term. Like others he believes that some parts of Afghanistan will fall into the hands of the Taliban.

The military have always been clear that there needs to be a political solution. The irony now is that the country is not just handed back to the Taliban, the very regime which was toppled by the West in 2001.

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