Will public sector turkeys vote for Osborne’s ambitious cuts?

Do turkeys vote for Christmas? The coalition government clearly thinks public sector workers might.

The government's online 'national engagemnent' event, outlined in the emergency Budget and held last week, asked state employees to proposes ways to cut government spending.

To my mind, it evoked images of loyal, cloth-capped servants of the crown rushing to their keyboards to send craven messages to Downing Street saying how glad they would be to work for much less pay for far longer if they could keep their jobs!

This vision was implicit in what chancellor George Osborne said in his Budget speech. ‘Many millions of people in the private sector have in the last couple of years seen their pay frozen, their hours reduced, and their pension benefits restricted. They have accepted this because they knew that the alternative in many cases was further job losses. The public sector was insulated from these pressures but now faces a similar trade off.’

Now I am all in favour of correcting the balance in the economy towards the private sector after years of heavy investment in the public sector. There is much that the public sector can learn in terms of innovation and productivity from the private sector.

Nevertheless, as Osborne’s words sink in and as I look again at the Budget figures, I find myself asking: ‘how are they going to do this?’

Osborne said that as NHS and education spending were ring fenced, unprotected departments faced spending cuts of 25% on average. The table below indicates what shielding the two biggest items in department spending might mean elsewhere. The regions, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, work and pensions, transport, home office and foreign office are going to have to be cut to the bone.

Cuts of this magnitude leave the government with a mountain to climb between now and the announcement of the spending review on 20 October. It brings into question the viability of the whole Budget – whose pro-enterprise, tax-cutting agenda was predicated on spending cuts that have yet to be achieved, and which if they are, could knock consumer confidence for six.