Saving £50 Billion Pounds

The Institute of Directors representing the business community and the TaxPayers’ Alliance representing the taxpayer produced, in September 2009, a report that will save the nation approximately £50 billion annually by removing or reducing a number of unproductive items of government expenditure that don’t work or aren’t actually essential.

Reducing items of spending that don’t work

£451m – Abolish the Bus Service Operators’ Grant

£1,456m – Abolish Sure Start

£2,300m – Abolish Building Schools for the Future

£530m – Abolish the Education Maintenance Allowance

£740m – Halt further orders and upgrades for the Euro fighter
____________________

£5.477 billion total

Stopping government doing things it shouldn’t be doing

£270m – Halve the government advertising and publicity budget

£44m – Abolish Contact Point, the children’s database

£1,181m – Abolish the NHS National Programme for IT

£55m – Abolish identity cards

£45m – Abandon plans to extend the compulsory school leaving age to 18
____________________

£1,595 billion total

Reducing agencies and people that get in the way of frontline staff

£1,100 – Halve public sector spending on consultants

£921m – Reduce non-frontline staff in health and schools by 10 per cent

£1,233m – Reduce the size of the civil service by 10 per cent

£599m – Scale down ‘Local Education Authorities’ in England

£1,317m – Slim down the Department for Communities and Local Government

£940m – Rationalise the framework of regional government and business support

£818m – Begin a thorough rationalisation of taxpayer funded quangos and public bodies

________________

£6,928 billion total

Tackling specific budgets

£725m – Cut 25 per cent from the budget of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport

£862m – One-year freeze of the resource and capital budgets of the Department for International Development

£360m – One-year freeze of the Home Office resource and capital budgets

£687m – One-year freeze of the grants from the Department for Communities and Local Government to local and regional governments

£1,700m – Cut 10 per cent from the budgets of non-ministerial departments, except for UK Trade and investment and the UK Statistics Authority

£1,400m – One year freeze of the grants given to Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales (current spending only)

£757m – Simplify and rationalise the skills system and the plethora of skills programmes

________________

£6,491 billion total

Tackling above-inflation indexing

£1,441m – One year freeze of the Basic State Pension and the Minimum Income Guarantee

________________

£1,441 billion total

Restraining inflation-busting public sector pay and perks

£6,203m – Pay freeze across the public sector, excluding members of the armed forces serving in conflict zones

£2,508m – Increase employee contributions to all unfunded public sector pension schemes by a third

£1,218m – Reduce gross annual pay by 5 per cent for the richest 10 per cent in the public sector

_____________________

£9,929 billion total

Stopping paying benefits to people who don’t need them

£8,447m – Abolish Child Benefit and the Child Trust Fund, and increase the Child Element of the Child Tax Credit to address child poverty concerns

£1,350m – Taper away the Family Element of the Child Tax Credit at 39 per cent immediately upon exhaustion of the Child Element of the Child Tax Credit

£438m – Target spending on free bus passes for the elderly and disabled on those who genuinely need it

£564m – Abolish free TV licences

£1,200m – Abolish interest subsidy to student loans

_________________

£11,999 billion total