Over at the Beeb website, Mark Easton flags up a new Ipsos MORI poll on public spending; you can view the whole thing here. There are plenty of eye-catching results in there. For instance, most people strongly agree that many public services are a waste of money and can be cut, while 40 percent of the public think that the Conservatives would be most effective party at getting good vaule for money from public services (compared to 25 percent for Labour). In particular, I think these two charts deserve attention:
Going off what the Tories are currently saying, they’d ring-fence both overseas aid and health spending. The charts above suggest that public opinion is against them in the case of overseas aid and for them in the case of health; which will certainly place some pressure on them to change their policy for the former. I suspect, though, that the scale of Brown’s debt crisis will mean a Tory government also has to cut spending on health – so they may eventually want to start molding public opinion by pointing out the endemic waste in that particular service. Problem is, that doesn’t quite chime with Lansley’s emphasis on more and more spending.
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