Downing Street Says » Departmental budgets

» Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Departmental budgets

Asked about Justine Greening’s comments, the PMS said he thought the comments were broadly in line with what he had said this morning; departments had budgets which were fixed for four years and they were expected to live within them. What Justine Greening had also said was that these were four year plans and there was a constant conversation going on between the Treasury and departments.

The PMS said that over the course of four years, the world changes and that resulted in changes within those budgets.

The PMS added that within any year there was a reserve and there were sometimes calls on the reserve to take account of exceptional, unforeseen issues.

Asked if it was possible to overspend or underspend in any given year, the PMS said that these were spending limits, not spending targets.

Asked if departments had the flexibility to back-load some cuts rather than front-load them, the PMS said that the Treasury had discussions with departments about the profiling of particular programmes, but there were implications to that for the overall fiscal numbers, so the Treasury would need sign-off on any changes.

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