o

The similarity between David Copperfields Mr Micawber and David Camerons Eric Pickles in theory at least goes beyond the visual similarity in the images above. According to the words written for Uriah Heaps Clerk, “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery.” Eric Pickles used the following words when he gave a speech on 18th September 2009 “if you want a government that will bring prudence and honesty back to the Treasury, then there is a party for you – it is the Conservative Party.” Since the General Election Eric has spoken exhaustively about the need for local government to live within its means (which in essence means live within the budgets handed to them by Eric). This includes the publication of a booklet in December entitled “50 Ways to Save, Examples of sensible savings in local Government“ which at number 6 includes the introduction of especially tight spending controls. Eric has just volunteered for the local government budget in 2015/16 to be cut by a further 10% without consulting people he refers to as his chums.

However it would seem that Eric has once again been let down by his own standards. First there was the rather embarrassing failure to adhere to the rules on second homes which was exposed on Question Time on 26th March 2009, then it was revealed that the  Department for Communities and Local Government had spent £42,000 on biscuits after the booklet, which at suggestion 39 tells local government to stop spending money on food and drink at meetings. Now we read that a Parliamentary Committee has discovered that Mr Micawber has allowed his department to overspend, just a little. Well in fact by a stonking £217M. This has led Margaret Hodge as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee to publish a statement “This is an unacceptable abuse and waste of public money that could have been avoided with the right financial oversight…..I am staggered that the Department has been so blasé with its resources and so poor at staying within some of its budgets. If local authorities, for whom the Department is responsible, acted in this way, the Department would be down on them like a ton of bricks. The Department for Communities and Local Government must learn lessons and ensure it does not repeat these mistakes.”

This is a substantial sum by any definition and the figure represents half of the sum owed to the Big Lottery by the Government that was due to be repaid in October. The Government has been almost silent on when the good causes will have access to the money that was borrowed by the previous Government in 2007. The sooner that Eric gets his department spending under control the better and then perhaps he and his colleagues could turn their attention to repaying the Big Lottery debt!