The emergency budget

1.3  In May 2010, the Government announced £6.2 billion of reductions to 2010-11 budgets, and later formalised these in the June emergency budget. The Department's contribution to this total was 11 per cent (£683 million). Figure 1 overleaf shows where these reductions were identified. They included reductions from cross-government moratoria on consultancy and recruitment budgets, and one-off reductions to Network Rail and Transport for London budgets which the Department negotiated. The level of reductions in local authority budgets was determined as part of a cross- government approach; this approach included removing the ring-fencing on some grants. The revised budget was treated as part of the baseline for the spending review period - meaning that these 'emergency' reductions would have to be carried forward into subsequent years, or other compensating savings found. The Department delivered reductions in its direct spending as planned and reduced its budgets to third parties accordingly.