Tag Archives: investment spending

Mark Valladares

11 October 2024 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Fri 11th October 2024 - 10:50 pm
  • WFP People’s Health Trust: every day we hear more about just how difficult it will be for millions of pensioners
  • GDP: Last govt left our economy on life support
  • 100 days since GE: Govt should act “bolder and faster” to tackle the issues the country is facing
  • Rennie: Reckless behaviour of education secretary undermines Scottish education
  • Perth & Kinross Lib Dem secures Dunkeld housing deal

WFP People’s Health Trust: every day we hear more about just how difficult it will be for millions of pensioners

Responding to the People’s Health Trust report that says vulnerable pensioners face ‘impossible choices’ around heating and eating this winter as a result of the government’s cuts to Winter Fuel Payments, Liberal Democrat Work and Pensions spokesperson Steve Darling MP said:

It seems everyday we hear more and more about just how difficult it is going to be for vulnerable pensioners this winter as a result of the government’s cuts.

Pressing ahead with these cuts simply cannot be allowed to happen.

The government must reverse their decision and ensure that the millions potentially at risk of choosing between heating and eating this winter get the support they need.

GDP: Last govt left our economy on life support

Responding to the news the UK economy grew by 0.2% in August, Liberal Democrat Deputy Leader and Treasury Spokesperson Daisy Cooper MP said:

The last Conservative government left our economy on life support, and now it needs urgent investment in our public services and infrastructure to bring it back to life.

The economy won’t recover until the government fixes our NHS and care services so people can get back to work.

100 days since GE: Govt should act “bolder and faster” to tackle the issues the country is facing

On the hundredth day since the General Election, Liberal Democrat Leader Ed Davey has called on the Government to act “bolder and faster” to tackle the issues the country is facing.

Since the General Election, the Liberal Democrats have called on the Labour Government to cancel their cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance, introduce a new “Winterproof NHS Taskforce” and clamp down on the sewage scandal by ending water bosses bonuses.

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Posted in News, Press releases and Scotland | Also tagged , , , , , , , and | 1 Comment
NewsHound

LibLink: Bobby Dean – a return to austerity will not solve Britain’s problems

By NewsHound | Mon 23rd September 2024 - 4:45 pm

Whilst The Economist is calling for Liberal Democrats to move economically rightwards, the mood music from the newly-elected Liberal Democrat MPs is somewhat different.

In a piece for The House Magazine, Bobby Dean, the MP for Carshalton and Wallington, suggests that;

Starmer says he wants to end the politics of easy answers – and I agree. But on the exam question of “how to fix Britain”, he sidesteps complex answers in favour of a simple one that we have all heard before: we must tighten our belts.

If this approach turns out to be what it sounds like – a

…

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged | 12 Comments
Lord William Wallace

Tax to invest, or cut taxes to neglect?

By Lord William Wallace | Tue 7th December 2021 - 9:01 am

The weekend media have been full again of Rishi Sunak’s promise to return to tax cuts before the next election: cutting income tax and VAT further to win over – as Conservatives hope – wavering voters. But is it possible that the majority of voters would now prefer good public services, and targeted spending on long-term projects, to tax cuts that will squeeze public services further?

Martin Wolf in the Financial Times the other week argued that ‘we have to accept higher taxes to fund health and social care’, pointing out that the UK is still a modest spender on health compared to similar states. But it’s not just health that needs investment. The ‘Levelling Up’ agenda implies a generational commitment to higher investment in education, infrastructure, and economic innovation in the UK’s poorer regions. ‘Red wall’ seats the Conservatives won in 2019 will be lost again if all that happens is a trickle of money for specific local projects.

The contradiction between Sunak’s fiscal austerity and Johnson’s and Gove’s grand ideas about levelling up is becoming the deepest fault-line within the Conservative government, and a major threat to its credibility. November’s announcement of cutbacks in investment for northern rail was greeted across the region as a betrayal of promises to promote economic revival.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 57 Comments
Tahir Maher

Same old Economic Orthodoxy

By Tahir Maher | Mon 5th March 2018 - 11:13 am

In 1997, the Labour Party inherited a balanced budget from the Tories and for well over ten years we had Gordon Brown telling us that he had got rid of the boom and bust cycle. By 2009 the deficit had ballooned to £171 billion, higher than during the recessions of the 1980s, the 1990s and even when the Labour party went to the IMF, cap in hand, in 1976 (another fine mess they got us into) put together.

Economic orthodoxy maintained by Labour and and the Tories for the last forty years or so ensures the same economic models: over reliance …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 55 Comments
Nick T

Can the long-term decline in government investment spending be reversed?

By Nick T | Mon 21st March 2016 - 12:54 pm

Investment spending vs social security spendingIf actual government investment spending bore any relation to the amount of time politicians spent talking about it, Britain would surely have one of the highest rates of government investment in the world. In fact, for all the talk there are few signs of a reversal in one half of the most notable trend in Britain’s public finances over the last half century: the decline of government investment.

I say one half because there is another part of the trend, and it is the flip side of the same coin: the general trend of increasing spending on social security.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 25 Comments
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