Gordon Brown launches public sector effiency drive.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has promised another public sector efficiency drive just before his Chancellor Alistair Darling unveils the Pre Budget Report (PBR)
aimed at plugging our £175bn government borrowing deficit. In his previous incarnation as Chancellor, Brown used to raise the tax burden after the election was safely out of the way. However, Darling apparently wants to be more candid about the fiscal position. This will need a combination of tax rises and spending cuts. Given the sums required I suppose we will be talking about income tax and VAT as well as spending cuts hitting the big budgets of education and health. Gordon's stealth taxes, such as on pensions
and Conservative-led councils, will not be enough.
The independent think-tank Reform considers that the 6m public sector workers will have to be reduced by 1m. This is probably politically impossible unless the United Kingdom has actually gone bankrupt. Yesterday, Gordon was warbling about the capacity of government to do good while outlining measures to relocate civil servants from the south-east of England. Apparently, this would save on property costs. However, this would just increase the region's mismatch between its tax contribution and what it gets back from the public sector. I suppose Labour would want to relocate English civil service jobs to the devolved regions of Wales and Scotland to shore up its votes (ONS in Newport?).