Public Spending

Bob Blackman Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question, and I understand the motivation behind it. Given the scale of the challenge that we face in the form of the enormous structural deficit and the need to bring down that deficit further and faster than the previous Government proposed, I suspect that that task will consume all our time in the Treasury over the next five years, without having to worry about the question that he has raised.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

In the run-up to the election, we could hardly move for Labour Ministers making all sorts of spending commitments. Will the Chief Secretary tell us how many of them were subjected to value-for-money tests?

[Danny Alexander]

Having found the piece of paper that I was looking for earlier, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that a substantial number of those projects were agreed to very close to the election. In the week before the election was called, the Kent Thameside strategic transport programme was agreed, as were the Birmingham magistrates court programme, the Outukumpu project, Building Schools for the Future in Cumbria and the Sheffield retail quarter. That was all done in that one week before the election.