While the main political parties have avoided being honest about how they will tackle public finances nationally, the truth now has to come out, says Michael Burton

Now that the election campaign is over, the real truth about how the next government must deal with the public finances will emerge. I say ‘emerge’ deliberately, because that is how the winning political party will act, once it has got its hands on the levers of power.

As soon as it has got the horse-trading out of the way, such as which ministers fill which Whitehall department, it will then immerse itself in the Treasury for a fortnight, only to emerge ‘discovering’ that the public finances are worse than it expected.

This is then the cue to ditch all its election pledges and say, ‘We never knew it was so bad! We will need to start again!’

Early last week, the parties’ flimsy promises on both cutting the deficit and somehow protecting frontline services such as health, police, schools, etc, were exposed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Considering the meltdown taking place in Greece, and the awful realisation that it might happen here, the subject of public finances should have been the latter focus of the election campaign.

It was certainly Gordon Brown’s intention. This was his solid ground. Unlike his two inexperienced opponents, he knew the real state of the public finances and could expect no shocks in the unlikely event of returning to Number 10.

But, putting aside his unfortunate altercation with a real voter in Rochdale last week, he still failed to capitalise on his huge inside knowledge in the BBC party leaders’ debate in Birmingham last Thursday. Viewers remained as unenlightened about the parties’ true plans for the public finances at the end of the 90-minute debate as when they started it.

Asked by a member of the audience at the event, in Birmingham University, to ‘come clean’ on cuts, in the light of criticism that they have concealed their real plans, the leaders each claimed to be making savings without jeopardising the economy. Mr Brown said his four-year deficit-reduction plan would not mean cuts in the ‘frontline’ including schools, health and police. He said: ‘We will find it elsewhere’ and referred to ‘government restructuring.’ He added: ‘If you contract the economy now, you will lose growth and jobs. Take recovery out of the economy now, and you put recovery at risk.’

But the prime minister, while emphasising that spending reductions must not jeopardise the recovery, hinted at future capital spending cuts when he said: ‘Once we’ve built a school, we don’t need to build it again.’

Conservative leader, David Cameron, also pledged to protect frontline services, adding that upfront cuts would be in the form of efficiency savings, and he made a point of praising teachers while avoiding too much attention to his party’s plans for ‘free’ schools.

Liberal Democrats’ leader, Nick Clegg, said that the parties should ‘speak from the same script’ on finances, with their respective Treasury spokesmen working together, and he also called for the creation of a ‘Council for financial stability,’ a bid for coalition government.

The words ‘local government’ unsurprisingly did not appear mainly because the logical sub-text of all the leaders’ spending plans was that councils would have to bear the brunt.

None of them suggested that libraries, swimming pools, highway maintenance, adult education classes, weekly bin collections or social care might be under the axe because that would have been a vote-loser.

But, in reality, that was their message if other frontline services in health, police and education were to be spared.

A further concern is that several UK regions are disproportionately dependent on public spending. In the North East, it represents 64% of GDP, and in Wales and Northern Ireland it is 70%. For the UK as a whole, it is 48.4%.

Whatever cuts are envisaged, the impact will not be uniform. But then, as none of the politicians have told us the true picture, we shall have to wait until the Treasury cupboard is opened by the next chancellor.