§ This year's spending round was as tight as any that I can remember—I keep describing it as eye-wateringly tight—but we never lost sight of our objective, which is to sustain and improve the key public services that the British public care about: education, combating crime and our national health service. In part we have achieved that by increasing efficiency within the priority services, but inevitably we have also had to find savings in other programmes. [HON. MEMBERS: "Whisky."] You will find out in a minute.
Falling unemployment and lower inflation has helped to reduce the social security and employment programmes. We are also continuing to transfer activities to the private sector where this is more efficient as it is for student loans. We have refocused the housing 161 programme to encourage the use of private finance and the transfer of the local authority housing stock to the private sector. We are stepping up our programmes against fraud. We are continuing our remorseless squeeze on the costs of bureaucracy itself. And we have looked in every department for ways of achieving our objectives more economically. With efficiency savings, most departments will be able to deliver their programmes next year, but with less public money in real terms.