Cross-government Cost-cutting

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, who made some very pertinent points.

First, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Bird, not just on securing this debate but on, in his usual inimitable style, making us think outside the box. Both he and the noble Lord, Lord Rees of Ludlow, reminded me of the Tennessee STAR Project in the 1980s and 1990s, which discovered that every dollar spent on under-7s in deprived areas saved a further $7 in later life, whether in the criminal justice system, catch-up education, skills for work or benefits.

The noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, talked about council budgets. In 1993, when I was elected to Cambridgeshire County Council and immediately became the portfolio holder for education and libraries in the Lib Dem-Labour coalition, I had the privilege of learning from my leader, the wonderful Councillor Peter Lee, how to budget. Every year, we reviewed all our activities; every department was given a 2% target for cost cutting, but with the rubric that there had to be a detailed explanation of the consequences of those cuts. Every department was also given the chance to contribute 0.5% of its budget into a central budget for “invest to save”, so we could recommission our services knowing that, within a year or two, there would be substantial routine savings to follow. As my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire noted, it is always important to scrutinise costs and review unnecessary spend.

I turn to the National Health Service. Your Lordships know that virtually everyone interested in health talks about the importance of workforce planning. The noble Baroness, Lady Uddin, referred to the current strikes. There is no doubt that they are partly about pay, but it is much more than that. They are about what is happening in our health service at the moment. Without workforce planning, NHS England has tried this year to put a cap of £2.3 billion on agency staff spending—that is about 10% in some budget areas—to “herald an efficiency crackdown”. However, agencies are being used because of the large and increasing workforce gaps.

A Royal College of Nursing survey in June this year showed that eight out of 10 shifts were not staffed at a safe and appropriate level—that is once you have added in agency staff. The costs of agencies are breathtaking, with hospitals paying up to £5,000 per hospital consultant shift. The Royal College of Physicians has said that expanding medical school places by 15,000 would cost £1.85 million annually, but that is less than a quarter of the amount being spent on bank and agency staff at the moment. Invest to save.

A month ago, we had an SI in Grand Committee on biocidal products for the Health and Safety Executive. In response to a question from me and one from the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, said that, post leaving the EU, the arrangements for registering biocidal products mean:

“The total budget for the HSE’s chemical regulation division has grown by 39% … between 2018-19 and 2022-23, reflecting the HSE’s need for increased resources for its post-EU exit responsibilities.”—[Official Report, 21/11/22; col. GC 239.]


I was going to refer to Elon Musk’s approach to cutting as a businessman, but I will leave that to one side.

As the noble Lord, Lord Rees, said, cuts have been severe and too drastic. This Government need to understand that they need to go back to basics: understand the role of public services, fund them properly and certainly recognise the cuts we are facing as a result of leaving the EU.