Coalition by David Laws

Author:David Laws [David Laws]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781785900358
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2016-07-08T16:00:00+00:00

I was more successful in securing a very small saving in Education Department administration costs, but only after I managed to overcome spirited resistance. I had told my private secretary to stop people wasting money on replacing the potted plants in my ministerial office. This caused a mini-revolution. ‘I’m sorry, but there is no way we can take away the current, dead, potted plant, without replacing it,’ my private secretary was told. ‘You see, it’s here – on the floor plan. There has to be a potted plant, and we don’t have the power to alter the departmental floor plan.’ I considered that I did. The dead plant was not replaced.

I was less successful in delivering small efficiency savings in the Cabinet Office, however, where every week a man arrived early in the morning to wind up the clock on my mantelpiece.

Across government, other departments were also settling their cuts with the Treasury – with less noise and argument than had been feared.

Only one department was still causing the Treasury and Nick Clegg real concern: the Business Department and its leader Vince Cable.

In early June, Vince Cable let it be known privately that he would resign if he didn’t get a satisfactory settlement on the Business Department budget. On 11 June he had a blunt conversation with Danny Alexander in which he warned: ‘If you try to cut my budget too far, I might just walk out of the coalition and I would have a ready-made career for myself as a backbench critic of the government’s whole economic strategy. I have publishers approaching me who would love me to write a book criticising the whole economic policy of the government.’

Nick Clegg and Vince Cable eventually sat down for a private bilateral on the issue. The Liberal Democrat leader was annoyed, as he felt Vince was using his misgivings over wider economic policy to secure a good deal on his departmental budget.

Vince replied that he did consider that the ‘deal’ with the Treasury was that he had to accept economic policies that he didn’t like, but in return the Treasury ensured his budget was looked after.

The tensions over Vince Cable and the Business budget continued for the next two weeks. By the weekend of 22 June, there were even rumours that he might deliver on his threat to resign.

On Saturday 22 June, George Osborne phoned Nick Clegg to try to pin down the final parts of the Spending Review. He said that he was fed up with the Business Secretary making his concerns known through the media: ‘The Prime Minister and I have now drawn a line with Vince. We have gone as far as we can to accommodate him. We are not making any further concessions.’

On our regular Saturday evening conference call with Nick, one of his economic advisers reported concerns that Vince Cable was ‘right on the edge’.

My suspicion was that Vince was bluffing and that he would settle pretty soon. But nothing was certain, and on Saturday evening it proved impossible to get hold of Vince to fix up a call with Nick.

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