Cameron - further savings at Westminster

Today, in a speech, David Cameron listed further savings which he would make at Westminster. (We had already heard that he intends to require every item of government spending over £25,000 and every public sector salary over £150,000 to be published on line, to abolish the present £10,000 communications allowance (brought in to try to help Labour MPs save their seats), scrapping Regional assemblies and the Standards Board for England and to reduce the number of MPs by 10%.) In addition every quango will be required to justify its existence.

Now, today, we have further illustrations of savings:
1) The budget for parliamentary authorities will be cut by 10 % (saving £50 million annually)
2) Ministerial salaries will be cut by 5%, and frozen during the life of the parliament. (£250,000 savings annually)
3) Subsidisation of MP's food and drink in Parliament to be ended (£5.5 million annually)
4) The budget for official government cars will be cut by a third
5) Abolition of money paid to poublic bodies to lobby politicians (£10 million annually)
6) The Electoral Commission to run more efficiently and end all peripheral activities.

It is to be hoped that more details will emerge but, omitting the uncertain effects of publishing expenditure and salaries, the items above suggest that savings could be of the order of £66 million. This will rise significantly if he carries through his threat to require all quangos to justify what they do. Their budgets run into billions.

The results will still be small in relation to to the massive cuts needed to reduce the public sector debt and meet PFI deadlines as they occur, but at least will indicate that MPs and quasi-parliament will show that they are making cuts.

Summary - a good start, but a long way to go.