Chops to the Commons budget
Day two of the age of austerity and belt-tightening has come to the House of Commons.
There will be cuts in travel for select committees and in subsidies to catering. Mindful of public sector pain elsewhere the HoC Commission - its administrative board, chaired by Mr Speaker Bercow - has agreed a Β£12m cuts package for the current financial year, and will then move forward with a "fundamental review of expenditure" to deliver more savings over the next three years.
Key savings include:
* Cutting Β£800,000 from the budget for select committee travel.
* Cutting Β£500,000 from catering subsidies. This will bring cafeteria prices into line with benchmark workplace venues and bar prices into line with a competitively-priced high street pub chain, the Commission says.
* Scaling back a number of programmes and projects, reducing the Parliamentary works programme and freezing all but essential recruitment. That's what it says in the press release - I'm not sure what the implications will be.
The savings to be made this year are nearly 5% more than the Commission originally planned for the year and will reduce estimated spending for 2010/11 to Β£219m. This action follows the Commission's decision in December 2009 to cut House expenditure by 9% by the end of 2012/13.
Commission spokesman, and senior Labour backbencher Sir Stuart Bell warned that further "hard decisions" will have to be made.
I'm Mark D'Arcy and I'll be writing about what goes on in the chambers and committee rooms at Westminster.
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