George Osborne asks the public to say which services should be axed

[Valin]

The Times:

Roland Watson, Sam Coates
6/8/10

George Osborne will call on the public today to identify services that should be cut as he begins a “once-in-a-generation” drive to rein in government expenditure.
The Chancellor will start the ball rolling on a five-month review to set departmental budgets for the next three years under which swaths of Whitehall spending will be axed.
People will be urged to attend meetings and respond with ideas online as the coalition tries to bind the public into decisions that David Cameron acknowledged yesterday could be felt for decades.
The Prime Minister braced the country for “inevitably painful times” as the Government dealt with a deficit that was “even worse” than he had feared.

He said that on current trends, Britain would be paying by 2015 £70 billion a year in interest on the national debt — more than the present budgets for schools, climate change and transport together. By then, the debt — the country’s mortgage as opposed to the £156 billion budget deficit, or overdraft — would have doubled to £1.4 trillion.
This was “a dire, unprogressive outcome”, Mr Cameron said as he built the case for a heavy assault on the deficit. He said that such action was “unavoidable”, but that he wanted to go about it in a way that strengthened and united the country. “As we deal with the debt crisis we must take the whole country with us,” he told an audience in Milton Keynes.

Mr Osborne will use a Commons appearance today to hint at how he sees the public services of such a straitened future being delivered. He will set three main guidelines. First, that he wants unprecedented engagement from trade unions, charities, other groups and individuals. Ministers are expected to appear at public meetings in the search for ideas about how government spends money.
Second, the spending review will be coupled with a re-evaluation of the role of government — what it should and should not provide, how to improve the quality of key areas while cutting spending elsewhere.
Third, the exercise will draw on theexperiences of other countries such as Canada that oversaw a swift and successful deficit-reduction plan in the early 1990s. The Government there eliminated or cut public spending on business subsidies, transport, agriculture and energy as it retreated into a role that concentrated on policy development and regulation.

Services ranging from tourism, crime-prevention and youth job creation were handed over to the private sector and charities. Charges were also introduced or increased for the public, for instance in national parks.
Mr Cameron pulled no punches yesterday as he made the strongest public case yet for cuts. “How we deal with these things will affect our economy, our society — indeed our whole way of life,” he said......(Snip)