Anyone sensible given the task of growing the UK economy and helping more people to prosperity would start by saying current levels of public spending and borrowing are too high. The government is in a doomloop. hiking tax rates only to get an adverse impact on growth and the deficit. It comes back for further…
Anyone sensible given the task of growing the UK economy and helping more people to prosperity would start by saying current levels of public spending and borrowing are too high. The government is in a doomloop. hiking tax rates only to get an adverse impact on growth and the deficit. It comes back for further tax rises. Its critics get this, and say it should look at the spending side, but many of them too are terrified by the establishment view. That says all current government spending is necessary, current government spending is too low, not too high, and no government that wants to get elected can afford to cut spending. Suggest spending cuts and the government and public sector immediately retaliate by wrongly asserting you want to sack nurses or remove payments from the disabled.
Looking for cuts even this government has fallen for this absurd way of managing the public sector and running the debate. They tried cutting pensioner benefits but decided the outcry was too great. They fingered disability benefits and backed off, granting many more people access to them instead. At a recent meeting I attended of conservative policy specialists (Conservative/Reform/no party) and thinkers some of them too were mired in the idea that the necessary cuts a new government will need to make have to come from making painful and unpopular choices. They were agonising over the triple lock for pensioners, the exemption of pensioners from NI and other ways of reducing the spending power of the elderly who they thought had had the better deal this century. Those policies were part of a successful strategy to reduce pensioner poverty. Why aim to make them worse off?
I find it odd that so few people concentrate on vast areas of public mismanagement and over reach where large savings can be made. Why does no-one else see that the huge Bank of England losses on selling bonds in the market and sending taxpayers the bill is a needless self harm that no other Central Bank inflicts on its sponsoring taxpayers? Why do we put up with a military procurement system that spends £6bn on developing a very conventional small tank vehicle only to find it causes harm to its users? Why do we let a nationalised railway spend £30bn a year so it can fail to complete new track from Birmingham to Leeds and Manchester and fail to put in a new line from Manchester to Leeds?
Why do we spend a fortune on trying to force people to buy heat pumps and battery cars they do not want? Why heavily subsidise wind power when it is so dear and leads to deindustrialisation and loss of jobs on a large scale? Why when looking at benefit reform do too many think the level of benefits needs cutting when the issue is why do so many people have to be on benefits. How can we make work more worthwhile and help more people into work? Core benefits are not so generous that they need cutting.
The UK public sector is brilliant at defending every last penny it wastes, and good at demanding more. Too many politicians, commentators and lobbyists miss the main point. Far too much of the money going to the public sector is wasted, leaving us with very poor value for the large sums we pay in tax. The productivity collapse is costing us another £20bn to do the same thing.
