Osborne starts to assess plans for huge cuts
THE CHANCELLOR and other senior ministers will this week start trawling though departmental spending proposals, after Whitehall was ordered to slash its budget by up to 40 per cent.
The public expenditure committee (PEX), which is chaired by George Osborne, will pore over the departmental proposals to see if ministers and officials have risen to the task of finding the deepest cuts in peacetime history.
Most departments managed to make their submissions by Friday’s deadline, although a handful have missed the cut off date. They have been given a period of a “couple of days” grace, one official said.
Aides to the chancellor said that early impressions suggested the majority of cabinet ministers had submitted bold proposals that were in “pretty good shape”.
But one warned that a couple of unnamed cabinet ministers would need to work with the PEX to improve their proposals. “Some need a bit of work, a bit of knocking into shape,” one Treasury official said.
Osborne will be joined on the PEX by Danny Alexander, the chief secretary to the Treasury, and Oliver Letwin, minister of state at the Cabinet Office.