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”
Newsbot9
I decided I was better off doing things which had a chance of success, like 38 Degrees. It’s very unlikely I’d get responses from my MP which were useful, but 38 degrees has had some notable successes in London, so…
Absolutely_Passionate
“Try a basic google search”
Just so that we are looking at the same source info, can you post a hyperlink to a source that supports your belief that people are starving to death in the UK. It’s public domain, so there’s no data protection issues involved.
Newsbot9
So you know a site, but are asking me to post it for you…sigh.
Absolutely_Passionate
Well I googled starvation in the uk and I got a sites which cover anorexia, and various articles about world poverty and patients starving to death in NHS hospitals. Could you guide me towards a site that covers starvation in the UK? (apart from what’s going on in our hospitals that is). I’m keen to find out how people can starve to death in a welfare state (apart from the NHS scandal which we already know about).
Newsbot9
Yes, of course you’re ignoring the articles about people living in the cold, cutting back on meals, eating technically non-edible things to control their hunger, the rise of rockets and other deficiency diseases…
And yes, yes, you view the existence of the NHS as a scandal.