After the media frenzy over Alistair Darling's Budget, Robert Hill takes a more reasoned look at how a reduction in public spending will be achieved.

Chancellor Alistair Darling exudes calm. Even when talking big numbers, it's not his style to make a drama out of a crisis.

So, his Budget message to the nation was, ‘Don't panic – borrowing is lower than forecast. Recovery is coming, but we must not jeopardise it. And we can halve the deficit through a combination of growth, tax rises and spending cuts'.

In stark contrast, the media was engulfed by a fit of collective hysteria. ‘Our credit rating risks being downgraded', ‘The markets will turn on us', ‘Interest rates will rise', ‘Spending must be slashed immediately' and ‘We are drowning in a sea of debt' – is not an unfair summary of much of the press coverage of the Budget.

In particular, the commentators have worked themselves into a frenetic frenzy demanding to know where the cuts are going to fall. What these same commentators fail to do, however, is read the small print of the Budget book, which would tell them where a lot of the reduced spending will come.

Curbs on public sector pay and pensions, wide-ranging efficiency savings and asset sales have all been announced. And even if all the presumed efficiencies are not realised, organisations and agencies will effectively find that their spending power has been reduced.

It's not a new trick. It's what the Treasury has done countless times before. ‘Here's your spending allocation,' it says, but then presumes you are going to make X per cent efficiency savings as part of the allocation.

So, one way or the other the spending reduction has been achieved.

But the Government has also announced a host of ‘real' cuts in spending programmes – including £500m in the Department of Communities and Local Government, including: