So the Tories are able to tell us that Labour plans to cut the deficit (which they have never seen) will increase costs by precisely £3,028 per household, a figure now definitively rubbished by the Institute of Fiscal Studies and which the Tory party chairman has now admitted is mere “guesswork”. Yet they can’t tell us how their much-trumpeted £12bn welfare cuts will be funded or who the (big time) losers will be. Surprising, that. Either they’ve never worked out how to achieve a further colossal £12bn cutback in welfare benefits or, much more likely, they know that to reveal what it’s going to cost the victims would be exceptionally damaging just 5 weeks away from the election. Continue reading
Posted in Public services
NHS staff in England are being treated even worse than other public sector workers
It was Nigel Lawson, I think, who once opined that the NHS was the nearest thing the British had to a religion. If so the government has treated its priestly acolytes uniquely badly. The average real pay of NHS workers has fallen by over 10% since 2009. No less than 40,000 are paid below the living wage, and many NHS workers have to have second jobs to survive and some even have to use food banks. Effectively NHS staff donate £1.5bn a year in unpaid overtime. The government’s decision to refuse to pay even the 1% cost of living increase recommended by the Pay Review Body for 2014-5 added insult to injury. Continue reading
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Extreme and dangerous Tory spending cuts
The Chancellor’s final budget was less than twenty hours old before Liberal Democrat Treasury ministers tried to disown it by presenting an alternative ‘yellow’ budget, before abusing parliamentary privilege to deliver it as a ministerial statement. However, no matter how many budgets the government presents none of them can hide from the fact that the Coalition has failed their own economic test to balance the books within a single parliament and the Tories and Lib Dems will go into the next election having borrowed £200 billion more than planned.
The Chancellor’s broken promise means that instead of delivering a budget announcing the end of austerity, he is now planning cuts to public services which are deeper than any in the last parliament. In the next three years the Tories have promised to cut public services at almost twice the level of the last three years. Continue reading
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If you are going to tell porkies, tell big ones
If you are going to tell porkies, tell big ones. That seemed to be the Chancellor’s strategy in yesterday’s budget.
It was as if the past five years didn’t happen. The worst fall in real earnings in recorded history a total fall of 7.9% and even this is on the basis of the lower CPI index. No other real earnings decline comes close. The IFS says his tax and benefit changes since 2010, including the big VAT rise, have cost families on average £1,127 a year. Nearer £2000 if you are a public service worker suffering from the UK and Scottish government pay policy. Continue reading
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Osborne’s claim of a let-up in austerity in next 5 years is a lie
George Osborne didn’t deliver a budget yesterday. He delivered a party political broadcast on behalf of the Tory party in which analysis of the macroeconomic state of the economy, which is the real purpose of budget statements, was almost totally absent. Osborne’s speech yesterday had two aims. One was to give the impression that the worst of austerity was now over and the sunny uplands beckoned if you vote Tory at the election. The second was to shoot as many Labour foxes, i.e. Labour’s successful attack lines, as he could squeeze into an hour on his feet in the Commons. Careful analysis of the figures after the speech was over showed the magnitude of his failure on both counts. Continue reading