Well, I never! I always knew there was more joy in heaven over one sinner who repenteth than over 99 just men, but I never thought David Cameron would oblige. Yet his speech yesterday to the Conservative spring conference in Cheltenham opened up some quite radical ideas which Labour should take at his word and develop further. As a means of encouraging his “new age of austerity”, he proposed publishing all public sector salaries over £150,000 online. What a splendid idea, so good that we shouldn’t just confine it to the public sector. In the interests of getting people to accept having less, we should also require the earnings of the bankers, managers, lawyers, traders, and finance and industrial executives who are paid over £150,000 (the top 1% of the income distribution) to be published online as well. And why stop at their pay which is often so small a part of their totaoal remuneration? Publish their bonuses, stock options, fringe benefits, and incentive schemes as well. Good for you, Dave, you’ve really started something here. I like your proposal too that any public sector executive earning more than the Prime Minister on £194,250 should have to justify their pay to the Chancellor. What a cracker of an idea, but even better if we applied it to the private sector as well where it’s even more necessary.

True, the rest of the speech wasn’t quite so hot. The deficit in the public accounts this year, according to Darling, is going to be £175bn, and the year after, when Cameron likes to think he’ll be in charge, it will still according to the Treasury be £173bn. So how would Cameron deal with it? “I’m talking about a whole new, never-been-done-before approach to the way this country is run”, says Dave. Sounds menacing. The he gives us the 6 policies by which he’ll do it.
First, stopping couples earning over £50,000 from getting tax credits. That might save £0.5bn. Then cutting back on the NHS electronic patient record system. That would be lucky to save £2bn. Then there’s his sledgehammer blow – publishing online public sector salaries over £150,000. Shame might salami-cut £0.01bn off the total. Then he demands that every item of government expenditure over £25,000 also be published online (but why not all that mountain of tax-deductible expenses in the private sector as well, Dave?). Doubt if that would save more than £0.5bn once the bureaucratic costs of registering and publishing hundreds of millions of minutiae were deducted. The he pledges to shrink debt as a proportion of GDP faster than Labour. Great stuff, Dave, but give us a clue how. And finally, the coup de grace is to give the Cabinet rather than the Treasury the final say on public expenditures! If ever there was a recipe that would increase, not decrease, public expenditure as Ministers fought to defend their own departments, that surely must be it.
On that score, optimistically Cameron might next year, if he wins, cut back the public accounts deficit from £173bn to £171bn. So is that it, Dave? Or are you just giving us the candyfloss, and keeping mum about the public sector chain-saw massacre you’re really planning?

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