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POLLY BILLINGTON: Christmas is coming, and people
are beginning to think about the presents they'll give. Politicians are
also pondering on what they'd give people after the next election. Labour's
Gordon Brown is offering lots of goodies to tempt the voters; Tory Michael
Portillo is saying he'll spend less money on them as he wants to keep taxes
down - but will people worry that public services would suffer under the
Tories in comparison to Labour?
PAM WATTS: There has been a shift in people's
attitude, that they do want a higher service, we're a wealthier nation,
we expect a higher standard of living. And, more recently it has become
obvious that someone's got to pay for it and people are more attuned to
that.
KEN CLARKE, MP: The public don't want tax
cuts if it's at the cost of quality in their public services, I'm quite
sure they don't.
BILLINGTON: The Tories want to keep spending
below the level of growth of the economy. Independent experts suggest
they'll probably need to spend between five and ten billion pounds less
than Labour. So which areas of government - and therefore which voters
- would find they'd get a smaller present from Michael Portillo than they'd
been promised by Gordon Brown?
ANDREW DILNOT: Between now and the election
campaign the Conservatives are going to have to be much clearer about precisely
how much less than the current government is planning to spend, they will
seek to spend and the areas where they want to get the money from. I think
its reasonable for them to say that they want to wait until nearer the
election before doing that, but they're certainly going to have to do it
pretty soon.
BILLINGTON: The Tories have already said
they won't spend any less than Labour on health. And Michael Portillo's
committed to giving something more for pensioners. Ann Widdecombe's been
promised a generous present from Mr. Portillo for law and order. And the
Conservative Defence spokesman hopes to get more for the armed forces.
So lots of the bigger items on Mr. Portillo's list are accounted for -
which suggests he'll have trouble keeping his shopping bill down. The Tories
believe he will make significant savings by cutting out bureaucracy and
waste.
DAVID HEATHCOAT-AMORY, MP: We want a, a smaller state that does
what it does better with fewer civil servants. I mean the, the, the cost
of central government has grown by over two billion pounds under this government.
There are endless extra civil servants, which are entirely unproductive
in an economic sense. We need faster growing businesses, and fewer civil
servants, and less red tape. And that's why it's gone wrong.
CLARKE: If you're going to make
any real difference when you're in government it is no good assuming that
everything you want by way of extra resources is going to come from cutting
out waste and growth in the economy, they're the easy bits, very nice when
it happens. You've got to make some policy changes and you're confined
in the policy changes that you can make by the desire of the public for
ever better public services - which is right - and by the fact that you
probably have your own policy ambitions as well.
BILLINGTON: So some tough decisions have
to be made by Michael Portillo. And it's not the first time either. He
tried to cut back spending as a Treasury Minister in the early 90s, critics
say without much success. If cutting waste doesn't work, he'll have to
get to grips with spending less on public services than Labour. The Tories
have already marked out Welfare for cutbacks, and right-wingers have other
suggestions about where Mr. Portillo's axe might fall.
JOHN TOWNEND, MP: We have to reform the
social security system, the Labour government promised to do so and use
the savings on Health and Education. In actual fact the expenditure has
continued to soar and its almost a hundred-and-twenty billion. Overseas
aid, forty per cent goes to Europe, I think that should be repatriated
like the fish. We can spend the money better, and they are spending it
mainly in North Africa which is as a result of French influence. A lot
of the money is wasted - we could make savings there.
CLARKE: When I was Chancellor I
set a target of getting below forty per cent of GDP by way of public spending
and we just about got there. Now there were plenty of people who said,
oh, that's er, modest, you must go much further, but of course we shed
blood to get there, and it was all my right-wing minimalist minor government
colleagues who fought for their budgets and made it most difficult to get
that low. There's a level of public service and public support which you
provide in a western European society that's going to make it very difficult
to get much lower than we are now, as a proportion of GDP.
BILLINGTON: Now the Tories have the Trade
and Industry budget in their sights. Privately many Tory right-wingers
believe they could do away with the DTI altogether; that might not be politically
viable, but the man in charge reckons he can slash ten per cent off the
overall budget; more than four-hundred million pounds. That's not just
running costs; it would mean reducing the funding on business support services,
from export promotion to e-commerce.
HEATHCOAT-AMORY: What I've been told by businesses,
particularly small businesses, is that they don't want all these delivery
programmes of an administrative nature - what they want are lower taxes
and fewer regulations. So I'm going to use some of the money which I save
in order to cut business rates, particularly for small businesses. And
I think that would benefit the great majority of businesses, instead of
the comparatively few who benefit from these schemes which are delivered
by the Department or their offshoots.
GEORGE COX: Personally, I think we should
support small business. Small business is very much at the heart of the
economy, and not just being a small business, or creating a small business,
but growing. And if you think, what is necessary to do that, it's spreading
knowledge, making it easier to start a business, providing funding where
it's not required for.., where you can't get it from any other source,
providing knowledge, providing support - that's what small businesses need.
They need that more than a thousand pound off business rates.
BILLINGTON: For a business like Acorn Storage
Equipment in Sittingbourne in Kent, such savings could mean cutting off
a lifeline. Some of the money that would be axed by the Tories funds local
support services for small and medium-sized businesses. Business Link Kent
backed Pam Watts when she relocated and expanded her company, assisted
her in getting a DTI grant and helped shed light on building up her business.
WATTS: If you look at the grant
I've received from the DTI and the advice I've had and the cost of that
advice, it amounts to quite a large amount of money and the sort of tax
cut I'd have to have to replace that would - I just can't see any government
being able to come up with that to be honest. So, no it's not gonna happen
to me. So I'll go for Kent Business Link and the advice they give and any
grants that are available to help me expand.
BILLINGTON: The Conservatives don't believe
the DTI is very effective at picking out what's best for businesses. They
think the energy of the free market is a better way of giving a lift to
the economy.
HEATHCOAT-AMORY: I don't think that politicians
and civil servants are very good at targeting help. I think it's much
better to leave it to the dynamism of the market; leave it to businessmen
themselves to trade, to invest and prosper and export. And they do need
some information on which to do that. There is a role for government but
it's expanded out of all recognition and it's absorbing resources which
should be better used in keeping the burden of taxation down.
PETER KITCHING: The DTI is traditionally
one of the weakest departments in Government, its budget in comparison
with the vast budgets of the DETR and DefE is really quite pitiful for
the job that it has to do. For a government, for any government, that
trumpets that we need an enterprise economy to contemplate in any way reducing
and not increasing, the DTI's budget and therefore the enterprise in the
economy, is clearly gross mis-statement and gross misunderstanding of the
situation.
BILLINGTON: Nearly half a billion pounds
from the DTI's budget is a start but it still leaves the Tories with a
lot of savings to make. There's a problem though; if they're specific about
where the axe will fall, someone is going to squeal. And if they are vague,
Labour can accuse them of wanting to cut popular services like schools
and hospitals and that could damage the Tories at the ballot box too. All
of this is because the Tories hope promising to spend less than Labour
will tempt the voters with the prospect of tax cuts in the future, but
is that what voters really want?
In the political market place many voters are shopping around for the
best deal like these in Kent. The Tories have promised to match Labour's
commitments on health and pensions. They haven't made the same pledge yet
on other popular services. Unless they do though voters may conclude that
services like education aren't as close to Tory hearts as they are to Labour's.
DILNOT: I think the fact that they've
ring-fenced health certainly makes other areas look more vulnerable to
cuts or proposed cuts relative to what the Labour government would do,
but where are you going to make those cuts, education, another large programme,
but education is also an area where I think the Conservatives feel under
some threats. I think they may feel they need to match Labour's spending
on education.
COX: There's very few if
any areas of public expenditure that any of us would really like to see
cut. You don't want to see less spent on health, or less spent on education,
or less spent on defence. So it is very easy to be positioned as cutting
something and then someone some says, "Which of these will you cut?" And
that's a very hard argument to then win.
BILLINGTON: The leader of Kent County Council
has been dubbed the most powerful Tory in the country. Sandy Bruce-Lockhart
controls a budget of a billion pounds and he doesn't cut budgets for the
sake of it. His pitch to the voters in '97 that got him elected, emphasised
spending rather than saving.
SANDY BRUCE-LOCKHART: We decided to make only five commitments
which we knew we could keep. The first thing was to retain and fight for
the retention of our grammar schools. Secondly was put more money into
adult education, into youth education, into our libraries and re-open and
extend library hours and finally to put money into voluntary organisations
and to restart grants to village and community halls.
BILLINGTON: He's also spending money on
family centres like this one he's visiting in Gravesend. He senses that
tax cuts are not the voters' priority in the way they used to be. People
who depend on public services like schools, hospitals and public transport
want their politicians to organise and fund them well and that means investing
for the future. The issue of whether people prefer having a tax cut in
their pockets or a bit more spent on services is something that Sandy Bruce-Lockhart
has researched.
BRUCE-LOCKHART: There undoubtedly has been a shift
over the last ten years. I think if you'd asked that question ten years
ago the answer quite simply would've been lower councils tax, full-stop.
People are now saying, yes, clearly we want our council tax to be low
but we also want to see quality services.
BILLINGTON: But voters have a history of
telling pollsters they prefer money spent on public services yet at election
time the results haven't always turned out that way. Strategists designing
the Tory offering at the next election are hoping that tax cuts can yet
again be their trump card.
HEATHCOAT-AMORY: Tax is still a live and potent
issue - so we are going into the election pledged, over time, to get that
burden of taxation dropping back again; and one of the ways we can do it
is to slim down the process of government itself, cut out the unnecessary
expenditure programmes, concentrate on the front line services that people
want, and help the economy to grow.
CLARKE: When you have a good run
you can deliver some tax cuts but I think people put the economic well-being
of the country before tax cuts and I think they put the quality of their
hospitals and their medical services and their schools and their universities
before tax cuts and you therefore require very good government to be able
to produce tax cuts every now and again.
BILLINGTON: If the voters conclude throwing
money at problems hasn't worked under Labour - maybe they'll conclude money
isn't the answer. But they'll want to be reassured that public services
will be safe before they trust the Tories with the nation's finances.
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