Everyone knew there would be very little money to spare in Wednesday’s Spending Review and Thursday’s ‘Growth Statement’. The slow recovery of the national economy has put paid to any attempts to move away from ‘austerity’, so departmental cuts of up to 10 per cent came as no surprise.
Today’s announcements about infrastructure spending are yet another U-turn for a coalition government which cut capital spending far too deeply at the last spending round.
Across the nations the chancellor’s spending review has received a mixed reaction to say the very least.
We’ve a gaffe-prone chancellor in George Osborne: before it was the 4×4 in the disabled parking space, then it was the fine for not having a first class ticket. Now he’s caught out by The Sun for eating a “posh burger”.
Health spending has always been a public priority: PwC recently found that 67 per cent of people support protecting the NHS – up from 58 per cent in 2010.
We were anticipating the announcement about a cap on Annually Managed Expenditure (AME) spending for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). This accounts for a huge lump of government spending overall – much of the rest of the savings are tinkering by comparison.
Faisal Islam at Channel 4 Factcheck claims to have witnessed “the most egregious statistical chicanery…in a Treasury fiscal event in 13 years of covering economics for newspapers and TV”.
So much remains in doubt on bonuses. But what we know for sure is that the Treasury’s entire bank levy revenue estimates between 2011-2014 were made when bonus payments were anticipated to be higher than they had been in 2008. And the idea that the banks should be offered another sop when they should be paying for the mess they created simply demonstrates where this conservative coalition’s priorities lie.
The influential Labour back-bencher John Cruddas will use the politics column in this week’s New Statesman to launch a withering attack on the Coalition’s changes to housing benefit – likening the policy to a “modern-day Highland clearance”.
Apart from the poorest being hit hardest as a percentage of income and the weak British economy being severely strained, it is equally appalling how many pledges made by the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives have been simply brushed under the carpet throughout the months – and the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) laid them bare.
