LABOUR PM Burnham and his former Defence Secretary Chancellor John Healey have written a joint letter to Cabinet ministers telling them that their job is to prepare to make massive budget cuts.
Healey announced last Friday that his first Budget will be on 28th October and warned that it will be ‘built on fiscal discipline’.
The joint letter told ministers they must work ‘within the budgets they have already got’ even while ‘paying for new things they want to do this year and next’.
In the two weeks since his appointment as PM, Burnham has made a succession of costly announcements, including a cut in VAT on electricity bills, reduced business rates for pubs, devolution across England and an expansion of technical training in schools.
But in their joint letter to ministers the Chancellor and the Prime Minister warned that no new money is available for these initiatives.
‘We’ve written to the Cabinet to say that if we’re serious about new priorities as a second-stage Labour government we have to be serious about – and they have to be serious about – reprioritisation of their plans, their budgets, Healey said on Saturday.
‘They need to pay for the new things they want to do this year and next year within the budgets they’ve already got.’
In an article for Saturday’s anti-union Murdoch-run Times newspaper, Healey wrote that government departments need to be ‘disciplined on spending, looking at the tough choices and being ready to shift funding away from unproductive or legacy programmes that no longer reflect this administration’s priorities’.
Healey made clear that preparations for imperialist war and spending on ‘defence’ are his priorities as Chancellor.
‘At the spending review, we will set out a clear path to meeting our 3.5 per cent NATO commitment in 2035 and we will set a target date on that path for 3 per cent,’ he told The Times.
Earlier, he said the Budget would ‘meet our fiscal rules’ and ‘give businesses and families some of the stability they need to plan for the future’.
