10/01/05 - Conservatives To Scrap Prescott's Empire

Conservatives to scrap Prescott’s empire saving £2.3 billion

New study reveals substantial additional savings that councils could implement  themselves to reduce the burden of council tax.

Shadow Chancellor, Oliver Letwin and Shadow Local Government Secretary, Caroline Spelman, announced today that the next Conservative Government will save £2.3 billion by scrapping the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

Following recommendations by the James review on taxpayer value the ODPM will be replaced by a slimmed down Department for Local Government.

The key areas where savings have been identified are:

·        Replace ODPM with a local government department,  abolish existing Regional Chambers and other regional quangos - £255m.

·        Free local councils from burdensome regulation and inspections, saving money in central and local government; including scrapping the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) and Best Value  regimes - £1 billion.

·        Refocus ODPM funding to scrap Prescott’s environmentally damaging sustainable communities plan. Achieve value-for-money in housing and regeneration, encouraging property ownership and a better match between housing provision and need - £1.015 billion.

The James Review has also found £700 million of capital savings which can be realised through the sale of land acquired through Regional Development Agencies.

In addition to the savings arising from actions of central government outlined above, the Conservatives have also completed a separate detailed study of efficiency in local government.  This has identified further efficiency savings of £4.43 billion local councils could make themselves in order to reduce spending and ease the burden of council tax. 

Oliver Letwin said: “Today we can announce £2.3 billion of savings from reform of John Prescott’s department and the bureaucracies it has created.  We will abolish the regional chambers, radically reduce the burden of costly inspection regimes and replace the ODPM with a slimmed down local government department.

“In addition, the detailed work of our reviewing value for money review committee has shown that local councils could do much more to improve their own efficiency, giving local council tax payers better value for money, holding down council tax.

Caroline Spelman said: “The ODPM costs a lot of money and wastes a lot of money.  It wasted millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on attempting to force regional government on the people of the North East, and it wastes millions of pounds by burdening councils with unnecessary bureaucracy.

“Conservatives will reverse the culture of Whitehall targets and central government control.  Local decisions should be taken by local councillors and held to account by local people.”