In Britain ministers have an unwholesome
habit of turning on public officials and others who draw attention to the inevitably
negative impact of funding cuts. “Just get on with the job and stop behaving
like wimps” appears to be their knee-jerk-response.
Only the other day our Home Secretary,
Amber Rudd, was caught lambasting police chiefs for their whingeing about swingeing
cuts and for daring to point out that these coincide with rising crime and
increased public demand. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, was
unrestrained in condemning the funding squeeze faced by her force, an “incredibly
demanding” £400m more in annual savings on top of the £600m a year of cuts already
made. But her pleas fell on Amber Rudd’s deaf ears. The Home Secretary wants no
coming-the-old-soldier or shroud-waving on her watch.
Having tried to pretend for many years that
child protection in the UK is immune from funding cuts, I dare say that the
government wants to hear no more from organisations like the National Children’s
Bureau, which has had the temerity to conduct very useful research showing the
scale and impact of cuts on children’s services. Forty percent of local
authorities are reported as being unable to meet their statutory duties.
The problem, of course, is not just
restrictions on cash budgets, but rising demand. Children’s minister, Robert
Goodwill, naively points to what he calls increased spending, but fails to set
this against unprecedented high levels of demand. He fails to remember that you
don’t get ‘owt’ for ‘nowt’, as they say in his native Yorkshire.
In a post last year, I drew attention to
the impact this sort of thinking had had on services in Louisiana, where year
after year of cuts and squeezes had emaciated services. Now the same is
happening here.
What ministers don’t realise, or don't want to admit, when it comes
to cutting is that services don’t become more efficient simply because you give
them less money. Usually they just shrink. Services can become more efficient
and so require less funding, but that doesn’t happen by fiat. It needs to be planned for and carefully engineered.
Penny-pinching usually has only seriously
negative consequences. The likes of Mrs. Rudd and Mr. Goodwill need to take
note.
