Why that Pre Budget Report could be a hostage to fortune

Major political events often take on a different perspective after the fuss has died down. So it will seem with the Pre-Budget Report.
On Wednesday it looked like very little happened other than a rise in National Insurance Contributions and bingo tax going down.
But while the Chancellor's speech spelt out only the themes, the detail contained in 'Securing the Recovery: Growth and Opportunity' - the title of the 216-page Pre Budget Report - was much more interesting.
A flick through that report suggests that when the Chancellor said now was not the right time to make cuts he didn't mean you'd have to wait that long for them.
So what do the main measures mean in practice?
VAT will go back up from January. What does it mean? Some stuff will be more expensive, some simply won’t be discounted as much, on other goods retailers will decide they’ll have to swallow the rise themselves. What amounts to an automatic price rise will also nudge inflation up.
Public sector pay rises will be capped at 1% from 2011: That’s pretty close to being a pay cut, as inflation will be above 1%. But people in councils and government will be in good company here – many private sector workers have lived with short-time working, pay cuts, pay freezes. Or redundancy.
Government cutting its contribution to public sector pensions: as above. Public sector pensions are a huge job attraction because they offer something the private sector can’t afford - which tells its own story. This has been coming for some time and may be the first in a series of changes that make a council pension less attractive than it used to be.
Employer National Insurance Contributions up by 0.5% from 2011: Likely to be the most unpopular measure in the Pre-Budget Report. Employers have quickly dismissed it as a tax on jobs and jobs growth.
The boiler scrappage scheme: a clever, sensible measure and consistent with a commitment to doing something practical about our looming energy/emissions headache.
Allowing firms to delay tax payments: widely seen as one of the most meaningful methods of helping businesses survive the cash flow nightmares that come with recession. Continuing the scheme gets a big tick.
Banker’s bonus tax: meaningless financially, but an inevitable response from a Government which was becoming exasperated with the banking industry's apparent belief that pay packets from another planet could continue even when the only thing keeping the party going was taxpayer bail-outs.
Hidden hostages to fortune: hidden inside the 216-page report were billions of pounds of cuts in public spending, as dwindling Government money is switched away from boom-year nice ideas to protecting frontline essentials. And even frontline essentials may seem to fall back: for example, the Chancellor’s much-vaunted commitment to frontline policing is to maintain numbers over the next few years, not increase them.
You are certain to hear much more about this in the days to come as the fine details of that 216-page report emerge.
UPDATE: Page 8 of the Pre-Budget Report gives the game away about what this all means.
The three key areas Alistair Darling said he would protect were health, education and police.
Health: "NHS frontline spending - the 95% of spending that supports patient care - rise in line with inflation". So spending on patients won't go up by a specific amount, but just enough to keep pace with prices. So the NHS budget isn't growing anymore, and non-frontline spending is certain to be cut back.
Education: "Spending on front-line schools rises by 0.7% a year in real terms and spending on 16-19 participation rises in real terms by 0.9% a year. Spending on Sure Start Children's Centres will be maintained in line with inflation."
What that means is that schools will get a small increase, though not what they might have been used to in the past. I suspect many will use their existing money for different things. Teenage skills clearly remains a priority, with Sure Start gets enough to stop it falling behind. But no more.
Police: "Sufficient funding will be provided to police authorities to enable them to maintain the number of police officers and community support officers". That's a promise only to maintain feet on the beat - otherwise, there isn't even a pledge for wider police budgets to keep pace with inflation.
These are not cuts in the sense that they have decided to take specific sums away. But they do indicate that the big budget days are coming to an end even in key public services.
Elsewhere the 'savings' will be more explicit: £11 billion through 'smarter' government and scaling down or getting rid of some quangos, £5 billion by 'reforming' the criminal justice system and legal aid.
Cuts or not, the public sector is going to feel the chill of a cold financial climate for the next few years.