An analysis by CSW, comparing the departmental cuts announced in the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement with the Treasury’s 2011 Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses, reveals how deep Osborne’s new budget reductions cut into departments’ non-ringfenced spending power. DfID emerges as the big loser, with cuts more than twice as big in percentage terms as the next most seriously hit department – the Department of Work and Pensions, which loses 2.0 per cent of its DEL budget in 2014-15.
The Department of Communities and Local Government gets off lightly in 2013-14, with a 0.08 per cent cut that preserves local government spending in the first year – but the cut then rises to 1.95 per cent, meaning more trouble for councils.
At the other end of the scale, the Department of Health has been spared further cuts and the Scotland and Northern Ireland budgets survive largely unscathed. Julian McCrae, director of research at the Institute for Government, told CSW that the devolved administrations are benefiting because the Barnett Formula “preserves the education and health spending” there.
The Cabinet Office will only take a 0.2 per cent hit in 2013-14, followed by a 0.37 per cent cut in its £2bn-plus annual DEL budget.