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
It’s not a myth that welfare claimants make poor buying decisions, it’s a well known fact. You are being blinded by socialist dogma into believing that they are all poor unfortunates who are not responsible for their own predicament. Maybe if you were to volunteer some time at “Crisis at Christmas” the scales would fall from your eyes.
Newsbot9
Ah yes, you want me to spend my time as you dictate, as ever. And you dogmatically declare me a wooly-minded socialist, ignoring the fact I’m neither.
Keep kicking people who can’t afford enough food. Who can’t afford power or heating. Who are homeless. Kick, kick, kick. It’s all you can do, it seems.
Absolutely_Passionate
I’m not trying to dictate to you, it was merely a suggestion. I felt that if you were to have some closer contact to the down and outs that you might begin to understand how giving them money is not the solution. They are incapable of using the money wisely, and usually the off-licences are their first port of call, if not their drug pedlar.
Newsbot9
Ah yes, you immediately resort to the pejorative “down and outs”. I spend plenty of time with the poor, the people you’re trying to murder, and they do indeed need money. For food. For bills. For clothing. For shelter. The things you’re trying to deny them.
You’re confusing your drug and alcohol habit with the with a few addicts, who are not representative of the poor. Moreover, a few addicts does not mean you need to commit genocide. It’s always murder with your paternalist far right…
You’re in the situation where if a poor worker dares buy themselves a beer at the end of the week you’re calling for instant machine gunning. You’re a good Tory.
Absolutely_Passionate
Unemployed single mother on benefits who spends £2,000 on Christmas with 20 presents for each of her children
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2246104/Unemployed-single-mother-benefits-spends-2-000-Christmas-20-presents-children.html#ixzz2Kd0r6gpn
Some poverty!