How about a royal commission on spending cuts?

So the cross-party crossfire on spending and deficits continues. It is remarkable that the actual underlying figures in this spat are totally unchanged from the figures we first reported on the day of the Budget itself.
 
But there clearly is a problem to be solved, and the political process seems to be shedding more heat than light. So I propose the establishment of a grand committee, a commission no less, on reducing the national debt. In fact we could call it the Commission on the Reduction of the National Debt. I would appoint the Chancellor of the day, the Governor of the Bank of England. Perhaps some of his deputies. The odd politician would be good too, but a non-partisan voice preferably, say, the Speaker of the House?

 
Actually, this commission already exists deep within the heart of the Debt Management Office as I found out on a visit there last month. It was created in 1786 and is currently a non-ministerial department of government. The last recorded business meeting took place on 12 October 1860 (when the national debt as a proportion of GDP was 101 per cent — a figure that is entirely feasible in the coming years). Since then, the business of the CRND has been carried out by civil servants, but given the current rancour, I can’t imagine a better time for its full reintroduction.

The Great and the Good could apolitically assess which public projects can be chopped without harming our economic future. Indeed given Mervyn King’s rather public proclamations last week, perhaps he is already taking his duties as a National Debt Commissioner rather seriously indeed.
 
PS Lord Mandelson this morning chipped in, pre-empting the Treasury on there being no need for a Spending Review (more on this later) this side of an election. It’s worth noting that from 1808 the Life Annuities Act mandated that the ‘Chief Baron of the Exchequer’ should be on the Commission to Reduce the National Debt. That office was abolished in 1880, but no one seems to have told Baron Mandelson of Foy and Hartlepool.