The Spending Review – what all the fuss is about!

Our Green Jobs campaign is focused on persuading the Government to retain a £60 million tranche of funding earmarked by the previous Government for the upgrading of ports facilities to support new offshore wind turbine manufacturing plants, and the up to 50,000 new jobs that will be created. But how does this actually fit in with the Government’s plans? Let’s have a look at how the Spending Review has actually worked so far, and what we can expect coming up. If you’re already familiar with economics, bear with us – we intend to be as unpatronising as possible!

The Spending Review is intended to detail how the Government is going to reduce the deficit over the next five years, by cutting public spending from £640bn in 2011/12 to £659bn in 2014/15. Although this would appear to be a rise, normally you’d expect Government spending to rise in line with expected inflation – in practice, this will be a cut of £83bn. What this £83bn will involve is being determined now.

Departments submitted initial plans during the summer, providing outlines of how spending could be reduced in the areas in which they work without impacting on their core work too much. These plans were discussed by the Public Expenditure Committee – the so-called ‘Star Chamber’. The PEX Committee consists of George Osborne, Danny Alexander, William Hague, Francis Maude and Oliver Letwin – as well as other cabinet ministers as appropriate, assuming their spending allocation has already been decided!

The Government then spent August consulting on the initial plans, both with the public and with an independent group of civil servants and external experts. In the autumn, departments have submitted full plans to the PEX Committee again, and these are being considered in the light of the consultation.

It’s this consideration stage that we’re at now, before the PEX Committee’s recommendation are submitted to Cabinet for approval. The results will be published alongside a speech by the Chancellor on October 20th. The thinking behind our campaign is to demonstrate to the PEX Committee that there’s strong popular support behind the funding we’re fighting for – and that there’ll be political as well as economic and environmental consequences if it’s cut. You’d assume that 50,000 jobs would be enough to demonstrate this – but we know from the Government’s previous announcements that we can’t leave anything to chance.