Labour would grant local government longer-term certainty over funding but could not ‘undo’ Coalition cuts if elected into power next year.
In a speech to the Institute for Chartered Accountants for England and Wales today, a shadow Treasury minister will warn that keeping public services such as local government ‘in the dark’ about funding complicates necessary reforms.
Labour’s Chris Leslie will name the ‘bedroom tax’ and reviews to the roads maintenance budget as ‘short-term budget decisions’ that are ‘hardly progress towards Localism’.
Leslie however will concede his party ‘won’t be able to undo the cuts that have been felt in recent years’.
Stating the next Labour Government will ‘take a more strategic long-term approach to the savings that need to be made’, Leslie will detail plans for the abolition of one year spending reviews.
‘We will instead set out Spending Review plans on a multi-year basis,’ he is expected to say. ‘We would go further go further and expect departments in turn to provide public bodies and organisations under their stewardship with the same longer-term certainties.’
‘As we have seen across local government and various agencies, keeping public services in the dark makes it harder to plan the fundamental reforms that ought to be addressed.’
