Burnham’s Government yet to have shown ‘vision’, ex-civil service chief says

David Lynch, Press Association Political Correspondent

Andy Burnham’s Government is yet to have shown it has a coherent vision for the country, a former civil service has said.

Lord Gus O’Donnell, who served as cabinet secretary under Sir Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, suggested ministers needed to demonstrate they were thinking about the “big picture” for Britain.

Speaking at the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ (IFS) “green budget” event, held each year ahead of the Government’s Budget, he said the Prime Minister needed to move beyond the “fix the foundations” mantra which underpinned Sir Keir Starmer’s time in power.

Lord O’Donnell said “The number one thing which I think we need to bear in mind is the big picture. What is the vision, right?

“We all went on about what’s the vision for the Government, what’s the vision for where they want to be in terms of public spending? And all those options that were laid out.

“I still don’t see a vision, right? I’m still searching for a vision.”

He listed various ongoing independent reviews into reforming benefits, reducing joblessness among young people, and helping people with health conditions and long-term illness into the workplace.

He added: “If you bring all of those reviews together you can say… and it will come with how you manage the answers to those questions that have been put, you could have a coherent narrative, which I think would make it much easier for the markets to understand where the Government is going.”

Elsewhere in the IFS’s pre-Budget analysis, Helen Miller, the director of the think tank, said the public debate around Government spending “focuses too much on headroom”.

Ahead of the last budget, then-chancellor Rachel Reeves raised a series of taxes in part to increase the buffer beyond her spending plans, known as fiscal headroom.

Her successor as Chancellor John Healey is likely to see the cost of the Government’s spending rise across the board due to inflation caused by the Iran War this year, the IFS director said, suggesting it could result in cuts.

Ms Miller said: “When the Budget comes, the headroom is not going to tell you whether the plan to get borrowing down is credible.

“For that, you’re going to need to judge whether you think the spending plans and any implicit cuts in them are credible.

“And if you don’t think they’re credible, so for example, if John Healey sets out a set of plans that you think are tighter than he will be willing to deliver in coming years, then by implication you would need to conclude that the consolidation he’s planning isn’t credible, whatever the headroom number in the books.”

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