The big news for Whitehall today is the publication of Tom Winsor’s police pay review, which suggests that at least one in four police officers will face a pay cut if his recommendations are adopted by the Home Office. They’ve just published Theresa May’s response on their website – apparently she’s going to ‘consider’ it. Given the scale of the savings she has to find in her department, though, I don't think anyone will be very surprised if she ‘considers’ Winsor’s suggestions to be eminently sensible.
But while the big guns in the Lobby have been getting excited about this (see Nick Robinson's take here, and Michael White here), the Treasury have been thanking their lucky stars that no one has noticed how much trouble they’re in.
Several different stories, all emerging today, spell trouble for the Treasury. Firstly, and most importantly, the British Chamber of Commerce has announced that they are downgrading their growth forecast for 2011 from 1.9% to 1.4%, as their initial estimate was “over-optimistic”. As both George Pascoe-Watson and Andrew Hawkins argue in this month’s magazine, securing growth again quickly is crucial not just for the UK economy but for the Conservatives’ (and George Osborne’s) political future.
Secondly, a report authored by former financial secretary to the Treasury Kitty Ussher published today criticises the culture within in the Treasury, particularly its propensity to value youth over experience and promote a “cult of the generalist” rather than encouraging specialisation among staff. Given the scale of the challenge facing the department (repeated at every possible moment by coalition ministers as a way of countering possible attacks on their policies from the opposition), this doesn’t look good.
Lastly, George Osborne himself isn’t helping is department at the moment – he is under investigation for not declaring his skiing trip to Klosters over New Year, where he stayed with banking millionaire Caspar Rock. Labour MP John Mann has written to the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner John Lyon asking him to investigate whether Osborne broke Commons rules.
With the make-or-break budget just over two weeks away, a source inside the Treasury tells me that they are working longer and longer hours to make sure everything is ready. But if the negative stories continue to trickle out over the next fortnight, the contents of the Budget isn’t going to make much of an impression on a country already concerned about its economic future.
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