Tag Archives: public spending

Lord William Wallace

What’s our line on public spending?

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 14th August 2024 - 11:55 am

What should be our overall party line on taxation and public spending? We have a new government that came into office promising not to raise any of the major revenue-raising taxes. It claims that it has now discovered far larger holes in public spending plans than it had expected. The reality is that the Conservatives and their media allies managed to focus attention in the run-up to the election entirely on the level of taxation, without addressing what that implied for public services and long-term investment.

So Labour are now stuck. They knew well before the election (as the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) and even the business pages of the Times were telling them) that government spending projections were unreal, that maintaining Tory plans would necessitate cuts in core programmes, and that Jeremy Hunt’s reductions in national insurance were almost criminally irresponsible. But they didn’t dare to be honest with the voters, for fear of the Tories branding them as a ‘tax and spend’ party.

We have been here before. Tony Blair similarly promised before the 1997 election not to raise overall rates of tax. We Liberal Democrats were braver, promising ‘a penny on income tax’ to raise the quality of education. I was then chairing our manifesto group, and vividly recall a Labour adviser telling me that we were mad to do so; ‘voters will never support a party that talks about raising taxes.’ But voters don’t want to vote for cuts in schools, health services, police numbers, courts and prisons either. It turned out to be the most distinctive theme of our campaign.

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Mark Valladares

29 July 2024 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Mon 29th July 2024 - 10:30 pm
  • Public spending audit: We must focus on NHS
  • New Mid Dunbartonshire MP welcomes home Kirkintilloch Roy Roy

Public spending audit: We must focus on NHS

Commenting on the Treasury’s audit into the state of public finances, Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesperson Sarah Olney MP said:

The shortfalls in public spending announced today are truly shocking, and the result of years of Conservative failure and mismanagement. We have been left with a stalling economy, leaving millions of families struggling to pay the bills and make ends meet.

To get our economy growing, we must focus on the NHS by cutting the waiting lists, giving the people the

…

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Mark Valladares

10 April 2024 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Wed 10th April 2024 - 10:30 pm
  • Government amendment on “deeply damaging” non-disclosure agreements does not go far enough to protect victims
  • Shoplifting: Govt continues to let organised gangs off the hook
  • Cole-Hamilton criticises state of sewage monitoring
  • SNP burn through ScotWind cash in record time
  • McArthur responds to opposition to assisted dying bill

Government amendment on “deeply damaging” non-disclosure agreements does not go far enough to protect victims

After tireless campaigning by Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran, the Government in the House of Lords has tabled an amendment to the Victims and Prisoners Bill that ensures non-disclosure agreements preventing victims from disclosing information to the police or other bodies (including confidential support services) cannot be legally enforced.

Responding to the tabling of this amendment, Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran said:

The Liberal Democrats have long been campaigning to end the deeply damaging practice of non-disclosure agreements. This amendment is a welcome move that will help victims to access the support they need.

But while this is a step in the right direction, the Government is not going far enough in giving victims their voice back.

We need a complete ban of NDAs in cases of sexual misconduct, harassment and bullying to ensure that no victim is silenced.

Shoplifting: Govt continues to let organised gangs off the hook

Responding to the news that assaulting a shop worker will be made a separate criminal offence in England and Wales, Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesperson Alistair Carmichael MP said:

For too long, the Conservative Government have been sitting on their hands while hardworking shopkeepers are left to face the brunt of the shoplifting epidemic alone.

As the majority of shoplifting cases go unsolved, the Conservatives has repeatedly failed to get even the basics right of tackling this issue – something their new gimmicks won’t change.

It is now vital the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary invest in proper community policing and ensure all shoplifting thefts are investigated.

The government is currently letting organised criminal gangs off the hook and leaving shopkeepers hugely vulnerable.

Cole-Hamilton criticises state of sewage monitoring

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP has called on the SNP and Greens to get tough with Scottish Water as it was revealed that in three local authorities there is no monitoring of sewage dumping at all and in ten more local authorities just one or two sites are monitored.

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Lord William Wallace

Public spending and the social contract 

By Lord William Wallace | Wed 5th October 2022 - 12:43 pm

Raising the rate of domestic economic growth, against the background of a global economic recession which may well be worsened by the current downturn within China, cannot have been the main rationale for the Truss and Kwarteng’s ‘fiscal event’.  The underlying purpose was to force public spending cuts, to shrink the size of the state and to make it more difficult for a successor government to raise taxes sufficiently to restore the social democracy that adequate public spending underpins.  Simon Clarke, now ‘levelling up’ minister, has specifically remarked on what he sees as the over-extension of the UK’s welfare state.

If current ministers were serious about introducing supply-side reforms they would recognise that public investment is needed to repair current inadequacies.  Low productivity is partly the result of inadequate education and training, most evident in basic skills for our domestic workforce.  Years of under-funding for pre-school support (yes, we should have fought harder against the coalition’s killing of the ‘Sure Start’ programme), for state schools and further education colleges, are to blame.  But as the Conservative chair of the Commons Education Committee has just protested, the new government has only talked about grammar schools and entry to Oxbridge so far, leaving education and training for the vast majority of British citizens to one side.

The UK has a lower proportion of its population in work or looking for work than many other advanced countries.  That’s not just due to the rising number of retired; it’s also because we have such a high proportion of people under 66 who are unfit for work or long-term unwell.  Underfunding of the NHS, and in particular of public health programmes that focus on healthy lifestyle, explains a good deal of this.  Lengthy waiting times for treatment translate into absence from the workforce.

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Lord William Wallace

William Wallace writes: Higher Public Spending: the big political taboo

By Lord William Wallace | Tue 31st May 2022 - 11:56 am

A recent Financial Times op-ed  argued that the UK should now recognise that the Ukraine conflict has imposed aspects of a war economy on the UK – shortages, rising prices, disruptions in supply – which require serious changes in economic policy.  The business pages of the serious press urge higher public investment, spending on education and apprenticeships to raise our woefully-low labour productivity, and government intervention to promote innovation, resilience against supply-chain shocks and sustainability.

Defenders of the NHS point to its much lower spending and staffing per head than comparable European countries half that of Germany and the Netherlands, far fewer doctors and nurses per head and less than half the number of hospital beds – which as the Financial Times says ‘reflect political choices, not what is affordable.’  State schools have been similarly underfunded for many years.  Teachers’ salaries, like nurses’, have been held down to a point where recruitment and retention is difficult.   Conservative MPs and others call for higher defence spending in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  Anyone serious about the ‘levelling-up’ agenda knows that it cannot succeed without a very substantial and long-term financial commitment: an additional 1-2% of GDP over a decade or more.

Yet Conservative MPs, backed by almost all political commentators outside the Guardian, still call repeatedly for cuts in taxation.  Their reactions to Rishi Sunak’s latest emergency package have expressed dismay at the rise in taxes it involves.  Sunak is still promising them that he will find a way to cut taxes before the next election, although neither he nor anyone else says anything about what cuts in spending that would imply.  And the Labour Party is silent on the subject, fearing that the Mail and the rest of the Tory press would love to label them again as ‘the high tax party’.  I saw a Labour leaflet in Wandsworth in the local election campaign that promised that if Labour won control of the Council it would keep Council tax at the same low level – a similar promise to what Tony Blair pledged for national taxation in 1996-7.

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Lord William Wallace

How does the UK finance ‘Building Back Better’?

By Lord William Wallace | Mon 6th September 2021 - 8:45 am

If the UK ‘s economy and society are to recover from the shock of the COVID pandemic, the damage inflicted by Brexit and the after-effects of several years of austerity, it needs a long-term increase in public investment. Boris Johnson has promised to ‘level up’ Britain’s poorer cities and towns, to ‘Build Back Better’ after Brexit and COVID, and to tackle the costs of social care. The Brexit campaign promised to spend more on the NHS. British chairmanship of the Climate Conference in November will risk embarrassing failure unless our government commits to an ambitious programme to move towards Net Zero.

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Fraser Coppin

Now is not the time for a return to austerity

By Fraser Coppin | Tue 24th November 2020 - 8:33 am

This week it looks likely that the Chancellor will announce a freeze on public sector pay and cuts to the foreign aid budget. There are also murmurings of more harsh spending cuts and tax rises on the way. If Sunak and the Tories are planning on a return to austerity then this would be a huge mistake, and the Liberal Democrats should oppose it.

There is no urgent need to cut spending or raise taxes right now. Borrowing is currently extremely cheap, and bond yields are likely going to remain low for a while. Even in the event that interest rates do start to rise, we can take the opportunity while costs are low now to borrow over a longer period of time, in fact we’re already borrowing over longer terms than any other OECD country so it’ll be a while before we have to start paying most of this debt back.

In these conditions policy makers can afford to be less constrained than they were in the past. There has never been a better time for some new ideas, and to build back better.

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Mark Valladares

31 January 2020 – today’s press release

By Mark Valladares | Fri 31st January 2020 - 9:52 pm

Jane Dodds: Conservatives are backtracking on their commitment to end austerity

The Welsh Liberal Democrats are calling on the UK Government to apologise for backtracking on a key election commitment to end austerity just two months after the General Election.

Prior to the election, the Conservatives had proclaimed on a number of occasions that “Austerity is over”.

Their 2019 manifesto, upon which this Government was elected, promised the same as well as pledged numerous increases in public spending.

However, over the past two days, there have been numerous reports that the Government is, in fact, preparing to cut spending by up to 5% per …

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Mark Valladares

31 October 2019 – today’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Thu 31st October 2019 - 11:40 pm
  • Stop Brexit. Build a brighter future.
  • Brexit hinders growth in green, clean cars
  • Davey: Labour’s spending plans “can’t be squared with the cost of Brexit”
  • Self-harm and assaults in prisons preventing rehabilitation
  • Lib Dems: Donald Trump and Boris Johnson both unfit for office

Stop Brexit. Build a brighter future.

Today, Jo Swinson’s Liberal Democrats are launching their slogan for the General Election campaign: Stop Brexit. Build a brighter future, alongside a campaign poster launch.

This election is a once in a generation opportunity to reshape our politics, and give hope to the millions of people who want a fairer, brighter future.

The Liberal Democrats’ slogan reflects a positive …

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Mark Valladares

14 October 2019 – the overnight press release

By Mark Valladares | Mon 14th October 2019 - 7:15 am

Labour’s renationalisition plans set to cost billions

Responding to the analysis by the CBI that the cost of Labour’s renationalisation plans is estimated to be £196 billion, Liberal Democrat MP Chuka Umunna said:

The Tories are pursuing an ideological hard Brexit, depriving the Exchequer of much needed revenue, whilst Labour plans to do the same with a Labour Brexit in addition to spending billions of pounds with no idea how they will pay for it.

The only sensible alternative to these two broken parties is to stop Brexit and use the resulting Remain bonus to invest in people and public services – the

…

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Mark Valladares

30 September 2019 – yesterday’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Tue 1st October 2019 - 11:07 pm

I allowed myself to be distracted yesterday… you know how it can be sometimes, so it’s time to catch up…

  • ‘Out of touch’ Tories plough money into roads despite people and planet crying out for public transport investment
  • Brexit renders spending promises impossible – Davey

‘Out of touch’ Tories plough money into roads despite people and planet crying out for public transport investment

Following Sajid Javids announcement of £25bn investment in roads, Wera Hobhouse, Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for Transport, said:

Just as people are starting to become aware of the damage we’re doing to our planet, the Conservatives have committed to spending £25

…

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Lord William Wallace

Time for higher taxes!

By Lord William Wallace | Mon 11th March 2019 - 8:15 am

Calling for higher taxation used to be one of the deepest taboos in British politics. When I was drafting the 1997 Liberal Democrat manifesto, under Paddy Ashdown’s firm direction, I can recall a Labour acquaintance (we were actively talking to Labour then, since they were not sure they would win an outright majority when the election came) telling me that ‘you must be mad; no-one will ever vote to pay more’. The promise of a penny on income tax to increase funding for education turned out to be a vote-winner for us; but New Labour never dared to commit to …

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Mark Valladares

8 March 2019 – yesterday’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Sat 9th March 2019 - 7:15 am

Govt decision on Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe a step in the right direction

Responding to news that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has been offered diplomatic protection, Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs spokesperson Jo Swinson said:

This is a promising step in the right direction.

I welcome this action by the Government, which contrasts the reckless incompetence displayed by the previous Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson.

Ms. Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s plight should give us all pause for thought. We must all do what we can to bring her home as soon as possible.

Moran: Fox wastes £2.6m on another vanity project

A Parliamentary Question from Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran has revealed that …

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Lord William Wallace

Lord William Wallace writes…Shrinking the State?

By Lord William Wallace | Tue 1st September 2015 - 11:55 am

Liberal Democrats need to clarify where we stand on how large a public sector we support, the balance of public spending and administration between state, national/regional and local levels, and the appropriate division between private and public provision in our economy and society.  We are now faced with a Labour Party which is likely, under its new leader, to reassert large-scale state-level spending, and a Conservative Party that wants to shrink and weaken both the central state and local government.

The Conservative Government contains a number of convinced libertarians, with an almost anarchist streak in their antagonism to state action, civil servants and public services (I know – I worked with some of them until last May!).  The current rule on regulatory policy, for instance, is that ministers can only introduce one new regulation if they can find three comparable regulations to abolish: a deregulatory bias that will run into problems when the next food or health safety scandal hits.  OECD projections for government spending indicate that the UK currently intends to reduce public spending from 42% of GDP in 2014 to 36% in 2020 – taking Britain from European to North American levels of public provision.  Whitehall Departments are preparing for cuts of between 25 and 40% in ‘unprotected’ public spending.  On some calculations local authorities will have barely half the financial resources in real terms in 2020 that they had in 2010.

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Judy Abel

Opinion: Why don’t we throw out the spending plans and start again?

By Judy Abel | Thu 12th March 2015 - 4:04 pm

When parties come up with their public spending plans, one gets a sense of deckchairs being rearranged on the Titanic, with a bit more spending on something one year and then a little bit less the next, parties micromanaging (and re-announcing!) their spending plans, making compromises and trying to spread the ‘jam’ ever more thinly.

Of course no one is really fooled. We all know that the number of district nurses has almost halved in a decade, that libraries have closed all over the country, that adult education services have been cut to the bone and that those on benefits such as Jobseekers Allowance are having to jump through ever more hoops to get their money. There have been serious cuts in social care services for the most vulnerable too. This may sound harsh, but it is the reality of living in Britain today.

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Posted in Op-eds | 83 Comments
Stephen Tall

Chart of the day: how spending on day-to-day public services will have been cut by 37% by 2018-19

By Stephen Tall | Fri 4th April 2014 - 1:55 pm

It is simply not true – as our critics on the left pretend – that we are slashing and burning the state. By the end of this Parliament, public spending will still be 42% of GDP. That’s higher than at any time between 1995 and when the banks crashed, in 2008.

    Nick Clegg, 10th March 2013

It’s a soothing line from Nick Clegg, designed to reassure Lib Dems that the Coalition’s austerity programme is simply curbing the spending excess of the Blair/Brown years.

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Stephen Tall

David Laws: let’s cut taxes and spending. For once, I’m unconvinced. Here’s why…

By Stephen Tall | Sun 24th June 2012 - 2:45 pm

David Laws has earned himself a generous write-up in today’s Telegraph, with the paper which triggered his resignation from the cabinet two years ago hailing his ‘radical vision of a liberal state’, and lamenting with crocodile tears that his downfall was ‘a great loss to the Cabinet’.

The cause is an interview David has given to the paper in which he makes the case for further public spending cuts and lower taxes — a case he has outlined in greater depth in an article in the current Institute of Economic Affairs journal, highlighted last week on LibDemVoice. Here’s …

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Dick Newby

Opening up public sector procurement, creating opportunities for local enterprises

By Dick Newby | Tue 24th January 2012 - 3:24 pm

This coming Friday I will introduce the Second Reading of a Bill which has the capacity to permanently change the way in which public sector bodies procure services – whether local authorities, NHS trusts or Government Departments. It will require them to consider how what is being procured will improve the economic, social and environmental well-being of the area in which the services are being provided. This means that, whilst they will obviously still have to take price very much into account, they will have to assess the social value which different potential suppliers can add to their performance of …

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Posted in News and Parliament | 10 Comments
Nick T

Opinion: How much smaller would Labour’s cuts have been?

By Nick T | Tue 29th November 2011 - 2:27 pm

“Too far, too fast” – until recently you could scarcely switch on a TV without hearing Ed Balls repeating his four-word analysis of the coalition’s fiscal policy. It seems to be a line that Balls and Miliband are no longer sticking to. If I were to give them more credit for economic analysis than they deserve I’d speculate that this might be because they realised it is utter nonsense. More likely, their polling showed them that the public just weren’t buying it.

And the public would be right not to believe it, because, on a key measure, the difference between the …

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Stephen Tall

LDV readers split on Nick’s talk of need for “savage” cuts

By Stephen Tall | Mon 28th September 2009 - 7:25 pm

A week ago, Lib Dem Voice asked our readers the question on everyone’s lips at conference: Do you think Nick Clegg was right to say that the Lib Dems need to be “quite bold, or even savage, on current spending”?

I was clear on my view:

I cannot see how the talk of “savage” cuts is helpful – quite simply, it’s not the language of Lib Dems. Just as importantly, it’s not backed up by policy proposals. Even Vince Cable has so far come up with some £14 billion of potential savings, while estimating that a total of £112 billion will

…

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Posted in Conference and Voice polls | Also tagged and | 2 Comments
Alex Foster

#ldconf podcast: Vince’s speech

By Alex Foster | Mon 21st September 2009 - 6:00 pm

There are now many ways of getting your brain around Vince Cable’s keynote speech. Read it on the party website. Hear our podcast below. See what ePolitix thinks – or the Guardian, for that matter.

vince-speech

There was much that was really important that jumped out at me from the speech – here are my favourite bits:

We should not be taken in by the hysterical nonsense about the country being bankrupt. It isn’t.

The Tories are currently getting a free rein to slash budgets. Tories like …

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Mark Pack

Will there be a cull of ministers after the next general election?

By Mark Pack | Thu 10th September 2009 - 8:55 am

Whoever wins the next general election, they will have to make some tough choices about public  spending. Will they dare look very close to home though?

In late 1914 when Britain ruled much of the world and was fighting a world war, there were a total of 49 ministers. Gordon Brown’s government currently has 119 ministers – an increase of 143%.

Some of the growth is for reasons most people across most parties would support, such as the creation of the National Health Service resulting in the creation of some new roles. But those areas of ‘consensus growth’ are relatively small, and …

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Stephen Tall

Nick launches ‘In The Know’ to save taxpayers’ money

By Stephen Tall | Fri 28th August 2009 - 1:45 pm

Nick Clegg has today launched the Lib Dems’ ‘Ask the People in the Know’ project inviting public sector workers to help identify ways in which government can cut out waste while protecting services in order to save taxpayers’ money.

Anyone working in the public sector can submit their ideas on where money can be saved at http://nickclegg.com/intheknow. Nick has pledged that ideas submitted via the ‘Asking the People Who Know’ website will help inform the work currently being undertaken by the party to identify areas of waste in public spending:

Hard-working nurses and teachers tell me how frustrated they are by

…

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged and | 3 Comments
Giles Wilkes

Opinion: Property and consumption taxes need to rise to fix the fiscal mess

By Giles Wilkes | Sat 11th July 2009 - 2:00 pm

Politicians everywhere are being urged to get real about the fiscal mess. For the last month, this has meant a bitter dispute about the government’s spending figures. Who will cut the most? For any numerate observer, the debate is trivial: a rising bill for interest payments and the social security budget make it inevitable, no matter what contortions Brown attempts in disguising the figures, and no matter who is in power.

CentreForum has just published a new report about Britain’s fiscal mess, called A balancing act: fair solutions to a modern debt crisis. …

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Stephen Tall

PMQs: Nick tackles Gordon on public spending

By Stephen Tall | Wed 1st July 2009 - 6:00 pm

Apologies, dear reader, but I’ve been busy at work rather than watching Prime Minister’s Questions (so that you don’t have to). I will catch up with it later, but I have read the Hansard transcript. And if today’s PMQs is remembered for anything, I suspect it will be for this quite sublime Prime Ministerial line:

… total spending will continue to rise, and it will be a zero per cent. rise in 2013–14.

Yes, you read that right: 0% counts as a rise in total spending in Gordon Brown’s eyes. The Evening Standard’s Paul Waugh (admittedly not a Labour cheerleader) sums up his performance today:

It was worse than that: it was bad in an inept, jaded, so-grey-I-make-John-Major-look-colourful kinda way. This was a man with the stench of decay around him.

Don’t forget that the economy and figures are supposed to be Brown’s strong suit. If he turns in a performance like this, it suggests that the only real reason for keeping him – namely a possible economic recovery for which he will claim credit – is disappearing fast.

If I were a Labour backbencher watching today, I would have my head in my hands.

That’s certainly how it read.

When Nick Clegg’s turn came, he also asked about public spending, linking the issue (in his supplementary) to his newly-adopted policy of scrapping the Trident nuclear weapons system. It was in his first question, though, that I think Nick did best, skewering the tortured efforts of both the Labour and Tory parties to avoid levelling with the British public how they will respond to the economics of recession. Full Hansard transcript of Nick’s exchanges with Gordon follow:

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Lucy Parsons

The Independent View: It is our politicians – not the public – who need convincing of the need for spending cuts

By Lucy Parsons | Thu 23rd April 2009 - 2:20 pm

Yesterday’s Budget was a stalling tactic. The Chancellor put off having to make the tough decisions needed to regain control of the public finances and gave no plan to move the UK back to black. David Cameron in his response promised that his Party would make these tough choices, but he failed to say how. There is a real opportunity for the Liberal Democrats, if Vince Cable can continue to lead the way as the only politician brave enough to say that the answer lies in tackling the big areas of public spending.

In Reform’s Pre-Budget analysis last …

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Also tagged and | 23 Comments
Stephen Tall

Clegg & Cable spell out Lib Dem public spending cuts to fund education priorities

By Stephen Tall | Mon 9th February 2009 - 8:44 pm

In his 2008 conference speech, Nick Clegg promised the Liberal Democrats would soon spell out exactly how the party would fund its policy priorities – new spending on Lib Dem policies, including tax cuts for the vast majority of citizens:

I want this to be the most progressive – most redistributive – tax plan ever put forward by a British political party. Using just a little of the money the government wastes every day. To help people in their everyday lives. That doesn’t mean cutting help for the poorest, of course. It doesn’t mean stopping vital investment in hospitals and

…

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