Government spending review 

…see’s a period of introspection.

It’s been an unusual summer on the government affairs front, with the traditional flurry of activity of a newly elected Government instead being replaced by a period of introspection which, apart from the Party Conferences, is likely to come to a head in October.

The Government is due to complete its spending review on 20 October by which time the various heads of department will have had their moment in front of George Osborne’s Star Chamber defending their budgets. Only after the 20th will we start to get an idea of how the proposed cuts in Government spending will fall.

Gus Lewis Head of Legal and Government Affairs “The future of many long-standing programmes and new initiatives is dependent on the outcome of the spending review and, given the scale of the economies that the Government has indicated it wishes to make, some may not survive.”

What seems likely is that recreational boating, like many other activities, may stand to gain in some respects but lose in others.

“Generally speaking, legislation can be expensive to develop, implement and enforce and we may therefore find that the Government is more receptive to non-legislative solutions to particular problems. Such a “light touch” approach might be to the advantage of the recreational boating sector, which has a tradition of self-reliance and self-regulation. We may also find, however, that some public services previously provided by the Government to recreational boaters are scaled back or withdrawn.”

HM Treasury’s spending review

The RYA submitted two proposals to HM Treasury's spending review urging the Coalition Government to abandon previous plans to include recreational vessels in the e-Border's programme and to rationalise the licensing regimes for outdoor activities involving young people.

Well done to all of you who placed your votes on the recreational boating issues submitted by the RYA to HM Treasury’s spending review. The E-borders received 691 votes, with the submission for outdoor activities receiving 406 votes.

We took a quick march through the different ideas submitted and those which receive the largest number of votes related to social security benefits, with some proposals attracting more than 1600 comments. From our brief analysis, most proposals seemed to receive an average of 400 comments, so the support for our proposals was very encouraging. Thank you.

Voting closed at the end of August but the site is still open if you wish to look through the ideas received and see how people have voted. Meanwhile, government is reviewing the ideas with the most potential and investigating them in further detail to see if and how they could be taken forward for the Spending Review on 20th October.

Gus Lewis, RYA Legal and Government Affairs Manager said: "The Government's Spending Review provided us with a unique opportunity to challenge, on financial grounds, certain issues affecting recreational boating. We took this opportunity therefore to highlight two key areas in which the Government could cut its expenditure to no real detriment to its overarching policies, but to the benefit of recreational boating."

The HM Treasury’s Spending Challenge asked members of the public to help shape the way government works. The Treasury received over 45,000 ideas via the Spending Challenge website which was followed by the opportunity for the public to vote on which ideas were best. 250,000 votes were received.