Why party promises should be scrutinised by the National Audit Office

From: Times Online
Peter Riddell: Political Briefing

Party election promises should be properly costed, but not in the current arbitrary way. The process should be undertaken by the independent National Audit Office (NAO).

This would avoid the present unseemly ritual of claim and counter-claim. Every Government does it, and every Opposition protests at being treated unfairly. Even the numbers are surprisingly similar: a £34 billion black hole in Tory plans according to Labour yesterday, and a £30 billion gap according to a Tory analysis of Labour plans 13 years ago. All this could be dismissed as just the usual pre-election froth but for the involvement of the Civil Service in helping to prepare costings, though Alistair Darling has done nothing new in using officials.

The Directory of Civil Service Guidance says that ministers and their special advisers should be responsible for identifying the commitments and assumptions, while officials should draw attention to any qualifications. But it is for ministers to determine the form of presentation.

Yesterday's 115-page dossier was published by Labour, not the Treasury, and was based on a variety of sources, including Freedom of Information requests.

There are two big drawbacks. First, the assumptions used are often controversial. The Tories complain fairly that aspirations are being treated as firm commitments and time scales are distorted, though all opposition parties can be blamed for raising expectations while seeking to avoid precision.

Second, nuanced distinctions between officials preparing factual information, and politicians handling presentation mean little to voters. The risk is that the Civil Service will appear, wrongly, to be lending authority to partisan claims, thus risking its impartiality. Civil servants are not allowed to provide advice to opposition spokesmen about their policies in authorised pre-election contacts between the two.

It would be far better to end these ambiguities by handing the exercise over to the NAO. This is already responsible for auditing the assumptions used in the Budget. Rather than a piecemeal exercise, the Government and the main opposition parties should be required to submit their manifesto plans to the NAO, perhaps as a condition of participating in televised leader debates. Such an exercise would be independent and be like-for-like, allowing voters to compare party policies.

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