Trimming the fat will prove a delicate operation

IN THE search for how to make spending cuts, David Cameron has apparently been impressed by the example of American Airlines.

The Prime Minister has remarked that by the simple act of reducing the amount of salad served on its flights by one olive, the airline saved $40,000 (25,000). The intention announced by Anne Milton, a junior UK health minister, to end the provision of free milk to under five-year-olds attending nursery school may, at first sight, have looked to be that kind of decision.

Mrs Milton's letter to her Scottish counterpart, Shona Robison, makes it quite clear the factors which weighed in the decision. The provision of a third of a pint of milk to nursery children was originally made in circumstances which no longer apply - wartime, when food shortages and rationing meant there was a serious danger that young children might be malnourished.

Expert advice provided to Mrs Milton appears to show there is no evidence this milk provides significant nutritional benefit. In this light, free nursery milk, may fall into the category of spending which Mr Cameron has deemed should be stopped.

The Prime Minister has described the government's approach as being like the "methodical turnaround of a failing company". When spending is rising, sales are falling, and debt is mounting, he says, the first thing to do is to get the books out and scrutinise where every penny is spent, asking whether it is necessary expenditure, and then to cut any obvious waste.

At a cost expected to rise to 59 million in 2011-12 and providing no discernable benefit, an accountant might well rule free nursery milk as a waste. But if that verdict was rejected on the grounds, say, that it is never a waste to provide young children with something that is good for their overall health, there is a second rule which Mr Cameron is seeking to implement - to identify spending "acceptable in the good times, but unaffordable in the bad times." Again, to an accountancy eye, free nursery milk looks to fail that test.

But politics is unlike business or accountancy. Mrs Milton appears to have known that, anticipating widespread opposition and proposing a cheaper option targeted on those children most likely to need nutritional support.

Mr Cameron, however, was alert to a bigger problem. Margaret Thatcher, because of her decision as education secretary in the 1970-74 Conservative government to end the supply of free school milk, was known for ever more as the "milk-snatcher". Mr Cameron has striven mightily, but not entirely successfully, to kill off the electorally-toxic Thatcher brand. With this one decision, Mrs Milton threatened to revive it.

The episode demonstrates, all too neatly, the enormously difficult task ahead for the coalition government. Hundreds of similar decisions will have to be taken by ministers. Though cold, hard facts may point to one conclusion, politics may point in the opposite direction. Ministers will need finely-tuned political antennae as much as an accountant's forensic skills.