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Alaister Darlings response to your question was hilarious on the clip, I had to blink to make sure I was not actually watching the Muppet he so resembles (Beaker I think his name is).

I have listened to it three times now and still cant find an actual answer embedded in his response anywhere or indeed a sentence that had any clarity or logic in it, yet he has the chutzpah to deliver it in a deapman authoratative tone!

This is exactly the sort of thing that has led to the huge disconnect between the electorate and our prospective leaders. His response and others like it (in my opinion) are as bad as the expenses outrage scandal, yet nobody evber treats their habitual arrogant evasions for what they are.

One criticism though Paul, fair do's there is a third party around, how do the lib dems numbers stack up? Vince has in theory more credibility than the other two chancellors put together but i have no idea whether their numbers stack up any better? because noboddy ever talks about it...if the Lib dems numbers are more realistic, why dont they get some positive coverage or indeed any coverage?

It would be good to have some sort of pamphlet describing to voters what £1 billion means in terms of public services. How many teachers per school? How many less operations per hospital? What scale of reduction to housing benefit? Etc. etc.

I've always thought that political parties should be made to produce two pie charts - one of their departmental spending plans - and one of the source of funding. That way voters could see directly the degree to which they pay for the War in Afghanistan or their kids schools etc. - I think they would be surprised.

Too much to ask to be treated like adults?

I would suggest that the battle lines are not drawn over the breakdown of the headline figures on both sides, but over the temerity of the Conservatives to challenge Gordon Brown's "stealth tax of choice".

It must be very embarrassing to find that a measure that Brown and Darling had hoped would be introduced under the radar of the average tabloid reader (a penny on a pint of beer - that's another matter!) has suddenly gone centre-stage. It's not just the relatively small (in GDP terms) of £6bn, it's about a whole history of stealth taxes that would serve as a blueprint (or redprint?) for future budgetary policy if they were to win at the General Election.

What if the man on the Clapham Omnibus were to discover that Brown, as Chancellor, had heavily raided his meagre pension by removing the dividend tax credit? What seemed at first like a trivial amount becomes highly significant when compounded year on year.

With such a great national deficit to plug, all parties know that taxes must mushroom after the Election. Unfortunately for the present administration, the opportunity to tax us like mushrooms (keep us in the dark, etc.) is under scrutiny and being challenged at last.

Maybe, just maybe someone will finally "get it" that tax simplification and removal of punitive taxation ultimately benefits an economy...

At least you're still trying to bring some sanity to this whole farcical election.

After the election nothing we have heard about the economy will have been real and we will all be faced with a truth which very few will be expecting.

They are arguing over trivia at the moment so if they can't get the trivia right god help us when the real cuts begin and the big payback commences.

I am involved in eprocurement and spend analysis services with the public sector and consequently spend much of my life working at a very detailed level with procurement information. Whilst I cannot give detailed metrics as these are confidential, I can provide a general overview of what we find in practice. Over the past year we have analysed around £50bn of spend and there are substantial savings to be had without any impact of service delivery. However there is no silver bullet - finance and procurement all ask the same question, "what are the top 5 or 10 things we should do to save money?", the answer is that the savings lie in lots of little identified pockets and getting to them requires systems, processes and discipline.

The savings sought by both parties exist and a sizable chunk of them can be achieved through better procurement of goods and services. The difficulty with this is that the focus is currently on 'better contracting' rather than 'better requisitioning'. Huge numbers of public sector employees buy things every day - from estates officers dropping in to B&Q to purchase nails and screws, ward clerks buying medical surgical consumables, team leaders booking temporary staff and council officers buying laptops. How do these people know that they are getting best value? The answer is often that they don't, less than half raise purchase orders and many simply pick up the phone.

Procurement departments diligently contract for goods and services and many do a very good job; however easy, electronic visibility of all of these contracts is limited and front line staff find it easier to do what they have always done - pick up the phone to the supplier. It is not uncommon to find a contracted item being bought at multiple prices from the same supplier, within a single organisation. Benchmarking the products shows again a large disparity in the range of prices paid for the same item across different organisations.

None of these savings leap out and say £6bn, but if the public sector could get a firm grip of it's internal requisitioning processes then moving towards saving £6bn would become realistic.

Oh dear, asking questions that require difficult answers - I can see one ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ journalist no longer being invited to the morning Labour briefings.

Out of interest, who provides the best 'breakfast' amongst the main political parties? Or do you have to bring your own muffin?

Amazing......
A couple of days ago Labour claim that cutting spending now would kill the recovery. Tonight we start to hear the cuts are already being carried out, billions here, billions there, already happening all round, so no way the Tory's can find more. And the NI increase is next year anyway, so the money will not be available for 12 months even if Labour win. If the Conservatives win and scrap the tax it's £6B that won't be collected - next year. No doubt this 'efficencies already happening' will develop over the next few days.........Anyway whoever wins will have to combine cuts and saving - I'm more concerned about fuel prices because it hits everything that moves - rich and poor alike....

LynD
I agree with you and imagine that getting a culture change is actually the biggest challenge.
As a Salesman my job is to maximise the revenue for my employer. This often means different companies pay the same for exactly the same product
Try getting a few supermarket buyers in... they're a nightmare and couldn't care if you go bust - also no Order number no payment, no exception. Other companies see it only fair to pay a reasonable price (nice people) and often don't even check the price they'll be charged. To make savings you have to be ruthless - it's a game of Poker

#8

The supermarket cartel on credit control could easily be broken if every hard working family and small business when they arrived at the checkout refused to pay for 6-12 months in line with the supermatkets own policy ( sauce for the goose and all that).

This should be coupled with a mandatory punitive high interest rate applied to all invoices older than 30 days enforced by law.

You would take out a fortune from the banking system and into the pockets of small business overnight in terms of both cash and efficiency savings, the ammount of time spent on the 'chasing invoices' merry go round is extraordinary and some of the biggest and high profile busineses in the country are the worst offenders taking full cynical advantage of their market position.

Why is this not policy for anyone to do something about it??

The trouble for small business, the very lifeblood of our economy, that this addiction to late payment causes is extraordinary, not just in terms of company finance but stress and quality of life also for the individuals it constantly affects waiting for invoices to be paid / amended / cut down for spurious reasons cos the big guns know you need the cash fast or you will go under etc etc etc.

The big supermarkets and banks have a huge ammount to answer.. but guess what.. nobody in the media ever even bothers ask the question and no political party has it as an issue on thier manifesto.

I wonder how much the big supermarkets contribute to lobbying organisations?


They would never accept anything less than immediate payment from hard working families and small business at the checkout so why on earth should we accept 6 month payment terms and a financial squeeze merry go round from them?

Think of what could be saved in interest payments to banks and efficiency savings by this simple measure which would take money out of the hands of banks and straight into the pockets of those in the real economy.

If that is not a case for the office of fair trading to report on then what the **** is ?

How about a story on the above Paul?.

The detail is all very interesting Paul, and very germane, but do you really think that any of us are going to get an honest answer this side of the election? All we are getting is a media dance with the parties releasing the smallest amount of partly mendacious material that they think will show them in a good light. This soon degenerates into deficit fetishism. I know the deficit is important, one of the most important items, but it is not the only thing on the agenda.

I mean, I would be immensely surprised if any winner of the election did not put up VAT immediately. But you're not going to get anybody to say that.

I'm more interested in how the parties are going to improve the economy in the future - which is the only way out of the crisis in the long run. What are their investment priorities? What are the parts of the economy that will be our global winners?

And also to look at how the drip of confessions about the deficit from the parties relates to their ideological position, and how reasonable that is.

For example, this morning we have Cameron trying to use inequality in pay to attack on public sector management wages. Now some of these are indefensible, but cutting them would be a very marginal gain. This is trying to co-locate anger about inequality with their public sector cuts. But that is laughable. Will they do anything about private sector management pay (viz this weeks £90 million payout) which is by far the greatest source of inequality? Of course not.

He was also trying to punt Tory policies (more privatisation, etc.) as the real solution to poverty. Which your recent foray into "Broken Britain" shows is equally laughable. What the poor need is more money and more (better paid) jobs. Cameron will not be doing that.

"They are arguing over trivia at the moment"
Because it suits them all to do so.
Nobody expects any sensible discussion of the enormity of the deficit because Turkeys don't vote for Christmas.
Cutting staff (consultation periods, generous redundancy) and rounding up all the "small pockets" of savings will not yield NET results very quickly at all. Neither will renegotiating contracts, which take time and legal input and can't be done all at once. Cultural change by definition takes time too. In the meantime, others will have to take the strain on deficit reduction. VAT increase is the 'elephant in the room'. Bank on rising to at least 20%. Easy, 'book entry', savings would be to wipe out defined benefit pensions for civil servants, then you might expect Unite to have something to say there.
The message for the voters is eat more red herring.

Ealdwhat - you are completely correct, it's all about culture change. The supermarkets ( like it or not) have clear policies on purchasing and payment and no ethical dilemmas like economic development. They are in business to make a profit and all of their internal controls exist to facilitate this. The public sector spend almost half of what we earn and in the main have little control or visibility of their spend, and conflicting priorities such as stimulating SME growth, job protectionism etc.

The key points over the savings numbers being put forward by all parties are;
a - they are necessary and inevitable
b - they are most likely to come from reducing headcount or cutting goods and services costs (short term saving targets)
c - some are being targetted at estates and establishment costs (longer term).

From the level of detail that I see daily, it is clear that getting control of goods and services spend and temporary staff spend could cover a high percentage of the numbers being discussed. But... that means behaving more like a bottom line focused private sector organisation and having a purchase order for everything, with approval and no payment unless the supplier has delivered the goods, got the correct contracted price and ideally rendered an electronic invoice. It may sound insane that this is not part of business as usual for these large organisations - but it's not!!

The point made about prompt payment is also germaine as govermnment has in place prompt payment directives around payment to SME's within 10 days - this is possible and is happening and a whole lot more of it could happen with better back office processes.

Tonyparksruns comment regarding small pockets and time to contract, I think is incorrect, as the contracts exist and the public sector has some of the best pricing around - it just has to be hard wired to the requisitioners desks. When I say small pockets of savings I mean hundreds of thousands rather than millions - in a reasonably sized organisation with a spend of say £250m, phonecalls/meetings with 10 suppliers can yeild £500k. With 1000's of public sector bodies the numbers add up quite quickly and there is a lot more to be had after these easy savings.

If every CEO was given a key target of 90% compliance to purchase order and failure to do this became a disciplinary offence throughout their organisations (starting with themselves) then we would quickly see the culture change! They have invested heavily in systems which they use only partially, they have the raw materials in the shape of contracts, what they currently lack is the will.

Having worked as a Civil Servant for both Conservative and Labour governments driving out efficiency, the fact is that neither has the magic touch; progress will happen at roughly the same rate. Efficiency also requires investment: money generally has to be spent up-front to gain rewards over the long term. Short term cuts generally undermine project plans and do more harm than good. Not replacing staff who leave will make things run worse, and is generally counter-productive. The division between "front-line" (good) and "back-office" (bad/bureaucracy) is often illusory; an Army runs on its stomach - cut the cooks, logisticians, etc. and you lose the war.

Without the detail from any party on their intentions regarding either efficiency, sufficient tax rises or cuts service provision, the electorate are deliberately effectively disenfranchised - we don't have the information to vote on the most important issue facing the country - how to deal with the deficit in the best (least painful) way. We are just left with our gut feeling as to how the Parties have historically behaved. This is not good enough.