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Transcript of comments by FS

Following is the transcript of the comments by the Financial Secretary, Sir Hamish Macleod, after his Consultation with Legco members on Expenditure in the 1996/97 Budget:

FS: Good Morning. Just to make a few comments having finished the usual, what is now the usual round of consultation with LegCo members on expenditure. Again, as usual, we'll have the round on revenue, their revenue ideas, much later in the year, probably November.

t:

I think because we've now been doing this for a few years, it gets better every year in the sense that more and more thoughts have been put into members' views, more and more of them giving us views in writing as well, which is very helpful. Quite a few new ideas have come up, but I think mainly the focus, the broad focus, as you would expect, is on welfare, health, education, labour and to some extent on law and order. Those have been the main points and if I pick out one, again, perhaps as you would expect, probably the item which nearly everyone mentions is CSSA improvements. And on that I have been just reminding members that if we do indeed give priority to significant improvements in CSSA, it will be very expensive, that's a fact of life and that means that there will be that much tighter situation in terms of the amount of new money left for other things. We can't do both. We can't have significant increase in CSSA and lots of other new spending as well, there is a limit. I think Members, by and large accept that, at least as a general point, that it will squeeze the money left for other things.

The other point I've been trying to get over is whilst there's a view that CSSA improvements are a priority, if members could just keep an open mind on precisely how we spend the money, that's to say whether indeed it should all go to the elderly, or whether the household expenditure survey will throw up other information which will suggest that maybe there are other groups that are actually needed as much, or more. So I'm just urging an open mind. Certainly improvements on CSSA, but precisely how much and to which sectors, we would like at the moment to keep an open mind. But I have to say that most members at the moment think the elderly is probably the priority. That's the present view.

Those views now, we will look at them in more detail. We'll follow up where we think we need clarification and then they'll get fed into the process which starts with resource allocation process which is an internal process, when we look of course at other proposals too from Policy Secretaries in particular and from members of the public. We do get, particularly people like Chambers of Commerce and so on writing in and we look at those. Then decisions on those expenditure proposals will be reflected to some extent in the Governor's speech, as usual in October, and then of course in the budget, the next budget. So that's, the process has now begun leading up to the next budget. Any questions?