Minister trumpets savings across Whitehall

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude said the coalition was “determined to go even further” in its aim to “cut the cost of Government”.

The cash savings, he stressed, had been independently audited with “no smoke and mirrors”, and were the equivalent this year alone to about £500 for each working household in the UK, the salaries of about 250,000 junior nurses or the cost of about 1.6 million primary school places,.

The coalition set up the Efficiency and Reform Group (ERG) based in the Cabinet Office, after taking office 27 months ago, to make “efficiency savings” across Government.

Mr Maude said: “It seemed to us absolutely crucial, that as we drove the deficit reduction programme, the priority rather than cutting frontline programmes, should be to cut the cost of Government.”

He added: “In the first year, a short year, until March 2011 we saved £3.75bn.

“This last year to March 2012 we beat our own prediction and saved an astonishing £5.5bn from departmental expenditure ... but we are determined to go even further.”

Mr Maude said the savings drive was “broadly ideology free”, adding: “This is just about running Government in a business-like way.”

The Government, he argued was “determined to cut the fat from Whitehall”, but insisted it was “not cutting into the bone”, for example by operating better with major suppliers.

He said: “In terms of how do we know what effect there is on frontline services, you can’t absolutely 100% know, but where we’re making savings, in for example on suppliers, in general we are simply taking out money that is being spent unnecessarily and making sure it’s spent better.”

The Conservative MP said that because the controls on spending were “working well”, the Government had determined they would be a permanent feature across Government.

The £5.5bn, he said, included £1bn saved by a moratorium on consultancies and on extending existing contracts.