Balls names DCSF targets for £500m cuts
Children's secretary Ed Balls has set out plans to cut £500m from his departmental budget.
In an article published in the Sunday Times last weekend, Mr Balls said the Department for Children, Schools and Families had been asked to make savings of £500m by 2013 as part of plans to tackle Britain's £170bn deficit.
He revealed that he will do this by cutting £100m in funding for after-school clubs, £135m from quangos, including a £40m reduction in the budget of Becta, the agency that promotes IT use in schools, and £55m from the Training and Development Agency.
There would also be a £50m reduction in bursaries for trainee teachers, with 'golden hellos' cut from £9,000 to £4,000 a year, and £5m would be cut from communications by sending fewer printed documents to schools and by taking Teachers TV off Freeview and making it internet-only.
Mr Balls said he aims to cut £7m from administrative costs by axeing staff and consultants.
Spending on frontline services such as Sure Start centres, schools and colleges was ring-fenced for three years in the last pre-budget report, published in December.
Mr Balls said that by offering more detail on cuts than the Tories, Labour was proving it was the party to be trusted with the public finances and that the Conservatives would have to spend billions of pounds more to fund their plans to allow parents to set up their own schools.
Mr Balls added, 'This is not the end of the tough decisions I have got to make, but here's £300m of tough decisions. I have got £200m more to find. We have set out more details in advance on taxation, spending and pay than Governments have in the past. There is a lot of clarity there. The problem is that the Conservatives are all over the place.'
