If the coalition is to meet its spending targets it will have to make further cuts to departmental budgets.
Public sector job losses could be significantly more than one million, according to a report published yesterday by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Due to the government’s failure to hit its savings targets, job losses in the public sector could be 300,000 higher by the end of 2017/18 than predicted, according to the IFS’s annual analysis of the government’s spending plans.
Within the IFS’s report, however, was also contained the prediction that, if the government continues to ring-fence the NHS budget, overseas aid and schools, spending cuts will need to be significantly more severe if the coalition is to meet the targets of its fiscal consolidation plan.
As things stand, just to keep his current savings plan on track, George Osborne will need to make much larger cuts to departmental budgets than he originally intended.
As we can see from the graphs below, the bar on the left represents what the government intends to cut while the bar on the right represents what the government will need to cut unless it reconsiders its policy of ring-fencing select budgets or increases government revenue through tax rises.
As the report phrases it:
“If such further cuts to departmental spending are not possible without a decline in the quality or quantity of public services that is unacceptable to politicians or to voters, then higher borrowing, further tax increases or social security spending cuts – perhaps after the next general election – must be on the cards.”
132 Responses to “More spending cuts on the way if coalition is to meet savings targets”
Absolutely_Passionate
Some young mothers are being prosecuted by TV Licensing for failure to buy a TV License.
Lack of food is not a problem in the UK. Obesity is a big problem.
Newsbot9
Ah yes, denial of the rapidly rising issue of starvation. Typical of your poor-hating fat cats, who have no idea what’s going on…food banks are being overwhelmed by the needy, many of whom of course work, and things BY DESIGN of the Government are going to get far, far worse. (Food inflation is running at 5%, benefits 1%…housing benefit is deliberately unlinked and far below the rise in actual rental prices…)
Moreover, obesity is a disease of near-poverty, but like you care about that!
And if you break the law…there should be one law for all. Including you. Including the young mothers. If you object to the law, try and get it changed rather than whining about it being used.
Absolutely_Passionate
Investing time and money to provide for yourself has got to be better that living on the charity of others,
Newsbot9
Government benefits are not charity. They’re society.
And of course you think people losing their food money wasting their time on pointless attempts to wash each others cars is a wonderful thing. Keep hating the poor!
(Also, your rich, with their unearned wealth, can be argued to be living on charity. Rather than earning their living!)
Absolutely_Passionate
What a peculiar way of looking at it. I get up in the morning to go to work to earn money on which I am taxed.
The so called “poor” stay in bed until it’s time Jeremy Kyle and a can of Stella Artois, and then on their way to the pub they pop into the bank to collect their unearned income which was taken from me (the one who earned it).
If you want to help starving people, then I think Africa is the place for you..