Spending review ‘conceals a lot of pain’

George Osborne is making much of having undershot Labour’s notional departmental spending average of 20 per cent. But that’s a dubious comparison. And it conceals a lot of pain… on public sector jobs, public sector pensions, welfare, still on capital spending, despite the £2bn uplift.

There’s detail still to come on the impact of the housing budget cuts, just what various constabularies intend to cut in terms of police numbers and much much else.

The £6bn forecast for administrative savings on top of all the savings already announced will be classified by some as an “heroic assumption” – for the record it’s the one third cut the Tories promised in opposition. It will be largely jobs as that is what administrative costs are largely taken up by.

Labour says it will prove later on that the money flashed around by Nick Clegg last week for the pupil premium was raided out of other parts of the education budget and makes a nonsense of the schools budget being protected.

They’ll also say that the tiny increase in spending on schools doesn’t anyway match 0.7 per cent increase pencilled in by Ed Balls as schools secretary which he always said was necessary just to stand still with increasing school rolls.