We have never seen this level of detail on a budget situation before.
Much of what was implied or left out of the budget is stated in astonishing detail here.
It is a total disaster for the Treasury and the government, but some will argue the Tories have taken a big risk with financial confidence in publishing it.
The highlights immediately are the implied cuts, as we had reported on the very day of the budget.
The social security budget is forecast by the Treasury to reach £193bn, a staggering sum by 2013/14, and will represent nearly 12 per cent of GDP next year.
Debt interest payments will more than double to £63bn by 2013/14.
I referred to the “costs of failure” that Chancellor Brown used to calculate about the Tories in the late 1990s in an April blog post.
By this afternoon, I will be able to calculate the full cost of failure, as defined by Brown himself, of his own period as prime minister.
The numbers obviously underline the parlous state of the public finances but there are other fiscal fireworks in here such as the amount by which the fiscal rules were missed, and references to the elusive “balance scorecard” which is a spreadsheet that the treasury used to calculate the budget.
Crucially, it contains the departmental expenditure limit envelope, or DEL envelope, that we would have expected to get if there had been a spending review.
It shows considerable cuts to the budgets of spending departments in real terms from next fiscal year -0.8 per cent, -4.0 per cent for 2011/12, -1.8 per cent for 2012/13 and -3 per cent in 2013/14.
And guess what? It shows that cuts were also planned in cash terms too, with the total DEL minus depreciation reducing from £390bn to £386bn by 2013/14.
The genius Carl Emmerson at the IFS thinks that this may have been prepared to give ministers the option of having a spending review.
As it is, it gives us some opportunity to try out some never-before attempted fiscal arithmetic of our own.
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[...] Islam, Channel 4 News’s economics correspondent, has got a good post on his blog explaining why the Treasury is so sensitive about this. We have never seen this level of detail on [...]
Why does it not surprise me that they have launched another investigation into leaks of information that is truly in the public interest.
We can only assume that these are their ‘optimistic’ figures and the situation at the time of the next election (which can’t come soon enough) may be worse again due to the increasing benefits burden.
No. No. No. These are NOT cuts at all. They are negative spending increases that show up on the spreadsheet largely because spending has been brought forward leaving a vacuum in succeeding columns.
The problem lies not with Gordon Brown and the Treasury who have been scrupulously honest with us but with Microsoft for issuing dodgy spreasheet programs. If Excel worked correctly then every graph would look like a hockey stick and the future would be rosy.
Just because Brown made a mistake with the economy is no reason to condemn the entire Labour movement. Give the man 5 more years and he’ll find lots of other people to blame.
Well, I said quite openly earlier in the year that I thought Gordon Brown was lying to me (and was misleading Parliament) when he repeatedly said in PMQs and wherever else he could, that Labour would not be cutting Public Spending. They’ve now done a U-turn on that and accept that cuts will be necessary. In my view, the one thing that is important over and above everything else, is that we’ve got to be able to trust the PM (whoever he is) to tell the truth. Labour, under Blair and Brown, have clearly had a problem with that. I think the Tories are entitled to publish such documents, the issue is the PM’s “trustworthiness” and “fitness for Office” really, not finances…
Public Services Cutbacks.
Can the media please ask the Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer and the opposition parties why, at this time of cutbacks to our essential services expenditure (schools. hospitals etc) the public expenditure on the Royal Family is not being cut, but is likely to get an increase???
Surely the Royal family cannot be seen as so much more important than our other Public expenditures that it is not only not being cut but seems likely to be given even more money!
How can any party even consider giving MORE money to the Royals when all other areas of taxpayers expenditure are to get CUTS?
Surely the taxpayers expenditure on the Royals should be cut in preference to cutting our Health, Education, Highways etc expenditure?
Or do all the Political parties want a society of poor Public services presided over by a evermore rich Royal family and their entourages?
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