I wish the Office for Budget Responsibility had been around when I was a young reporter. In those pre-internet days, my newspaper was obliged to send a motorcycle courier around the corner to Whitehall to pick up a pile of official budget papers. These would be doled out as the chancellor sat down in the Commons.

Deciphering these foolscap doorsteps (which – then as now – contained plenty of spin and obfuscation to cast the government in the best possible light) was not easy. Especially as we had one weekly deadline. Miss the deadline and the ‘real story’ was gone for at least another seven days. Or gone forever, if a more alert journalist spotted it sooner.

The OBR was established by the coalition government in a spasm of fiscal rectitude following the 2008 financial crisis. As a body independent of government, its forecasts are released alongside the budget and autumn statement. They are required reading – and the latest, on last week’s autumn statement, makes disturbing reading for justice.

In summary, the £27bn windfall consumed by personal and business tax cuts comes at the expense of departmental spending. As the Gazette revealed, with health and education protected, the MoJ is facing hundreds of millions of pounds of further cuts over the next few years. And this after the department’s budget fell by an eye-watering 25% in real terms in the decade to 2020.

The Law Society this week described the impact of further cuts on an ‘already overstretched and understaffed’ justice system as ‘unthinkable’. ‘Cuts to the justice system are incompatible with the government’s wish to be tough on crime,’ said president Nick Emmerson. ‘Only through serious investment will the government resolve the crisis in our justice system.’

This much we know. Yet, as an election looms, no political party is pledging ‘serious investment’ in justice. Certainly not Labour.

I do wonder though if these swingeing cuts will ever happen. A well-aired interpretation of Jeremy Hunt’s giveaway is that it is a pre-election bribe, the consequences of which the next government will have no choice but to attenuate or reverse.

This is probably the least worst outcome we can hope for.

 

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