How Osborne should manage the budget
Fraser Nelson 4:49pm
Reading George Osborne’s responses to Coffee House has made clearer my own advice to him: save money by decelerating NHS and education budget increases. Max out with rhetoric about “we will outspend Labour” and say “every penny of Brown’s spending will be locked in” etc. It will all be true. But simply increase at very low rates – 0.5% to 1% in real terms. By 2010, with unemployment and repossessions soaring, the public will be in the mood to hear that the government is also tightening its belt.
Given that the NHS has so little to show for the doubling of its budget, it will hardly notice if it is on a 1% real growth trajectory rather than a 2% real growth trajectory. But the Treasury will certainly notice - in money left over. The education budget is already big enough to have plenty cash for Gove’s Swedish schools project - £6,000 a head by 2010/11.
This, rather than a Gershon-style hunt for illusory spending cuts, will be the best way to save extra billions. Whether this is used for debt repayment or tax relief is another question. But slowing these two budgets is, in my view, the most powerful way to save.
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Verity
July 24th, 2008 5:49pmA more secure option is to privatise the NHS. Or allow citizens to direct the NHS portion of their NI contributions to private healthcare providers of their choosing.
In addition, as the "government" (you should excuse the term) is working up to denying people treatment if their ailment is lifestyle related, i.e., smoking, drinking or, the latest, eating, many of these people would be forced to direct their contributions to the private sector.
This should slim the NHS down considerably.
I would prefer to see it sold off in segments and the whole shebang privatised, as this would get rid of tens of thousands of dead wood "administrators".
All these panic measures by the incompetent louts in the Labour government, like paying doctors for saving lives, would be ditched by the private, wealth-producing sector.
Paul B
July 24th, 2008 7:43pmWhoa Fraser. I think its about time the NHS did without any growth in real spending at all. Its needs to learn to live on what it already gets and any increased spending (on patients -frontline) needs to be made via money saved elsewhere in its budget. To make any real impact that will need to be staff number cuts-will not need redundancies-turn over is high to do it via natural wastage. All the 5 a day advisors ad nauseum can be simply done away without anyone noticing -except the job holder that is. I would like to hear about spending freezes at the minimum.
mart
July 24th, 2008 8:36pmFraser, please help me out, I'm a bit slow. You want spending to increase at a slow rate, but is this taking into account the possibility of a recession? Increased spending would need an increase in tax receipts, would it not, unless spending is cut heavily elsewhere?
But you characterised the "slow" growth in expenditure as a way to save.
I'm confused.