Sponsored by
'Sorry - there's no money left'
'DEAR Chief Secretary, I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left'.
That was the content of the note left by Liam Byrne, Labour's outgoing Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Reactions varied from amusement, to horror that the perilous state of the nation's finances could be referred to in such a way.
Whatever your thoughts, one thing's for sure – the note was pretty accurate! As Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General I've been very involved with cutting costs across most government departments, trying to reduce our national deficit.
I'm trying, to the maximum extent, to protect frontline services on which people depend, and to protect jobs. So I'm spending the sunny days of August in the office renegotiating contracts with the government's biggest suppliers to make savings.
We've cut out hundreds of millions so far. I've frozen spending on advertising and management consultants, with exceptions having to be personally signed off by ministers. No vacancy in the Cabinet Office gets filled without my personal consent - every job filled now can mean a job lost later.
Every announcement of cost savings is controversial and none more so than our plans to reform the welfare system, which David Cameron announced on Tuesday.
Welfare and tax credit fraud and error cost our country about 5.2bn every year – that's equivalent to 200 secondary schools or 150,000 nurses!
Errors to do with the administration of benefits account for 1.6bn and I see the repercussions – people, often the most vulnerable in society, left without the help they are entitled to or faced with demands for repayment that leave them upset and fearful for the future.
The whole system needs to be simplified and we should also be able to do more to stop people claiming fraudulently. At the moment only 20m of benefit fraud-related debt is recovered each year – a drop in the ocean. Staggeringly, three out of four of those caught, are not actually prosecuted.
We need to move to stop fraud occurring in the first place but also take measures to find and prosecute those who think it's OK to fiddle the system.
Our new strategy will be published in the autumn and I look forward to receiving readers' comments on it. In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions on how the system may be reformed, I'd love to hear from you. I feed what I learn from local people into discussions with Cabinet colleagues.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Horsham
Thursday 09 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -1 C to 3 C
Wind Speed: 6 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: -7 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: East
