As the FT notes:
George Osborne is planning to cut staff numbers at the Treasury by about one-quarter and scale back his department’s role as he attempts to lead by example in the search for sweeping spending cuts across Whitehall.
The inherent logic must be that the next time we have a financial crisis we won’t need a government department to react. After all — who needs a Treasury when we have Goldman Sachs, PWC and KPMG all willing to pay for the privilege of doing the job?
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Agreed. The government managed to contain the autumn 2008 financial crisis by the skin of its teeth, the underlying problems haven’t been addressed at all, and as John Kay in the FT has quite rightly said, we may well be heading towards another crisis of an even worse magnitude. And this time the UK government – and other govts that have embraced austerity – won’t be able to contain it effectively. It really does look like it’s time to start stockpiling tinned food and ordering a supply of vegetable seeds. VERY worrying. 🙁
No, the inherent logic is that if you are going to spend less, you need fewer people to appraise new spending programs and monitor actual expenditure.
Some interesting reading…
http://www.variant.org.uk/pdfs/issue36/sticky.pdf
and here…
http://www.financialdirector.co.uk/accountancyage/news/2268917/kpmg-tax-shelter-convictions
None of the organisations mentioned are fit to be let anywhere near our public services.
Alex, that is not the reason behind these reductions in staff; the anti public sector ideology of this government is behind this. And, as Richard points out, the work these staff do won’t disappear, it’ll be handed to some of the very same private sector organisations that helped bring about the financial crisis in the first place.
I suggest you read Deeply Depressed’s postings about how KPMG (and others) promote themselves through postings into government.