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UK Government Spending “cuts” – Call Me Dave tells outright lies yet Again

Tom Winnifrith
Thursday 19 July 2012

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Telegraph, our beloved leader, the Right Honourable David Cameron MP, says that he is prepared to extend public spending cuts until 2020 in order to “deal with our deficits” because he is a responsible politician. No Dave you are a complete bare faced liar. To quote:

Asked whether the austerity programme would now last a decade until 2020, the Prime Minister replies: “I think it’s going to be…this is a period for all countries, not just in Europe but I think you will see it in America too, where we have to deal with our deficits and we have to have sustainable debts. I can’t see any time soon when…the pressure will be off.

“I don’t see a time when difficult spending choices are going to go away.”

Er… yes. I now attach a table from the website www.UKpublicspending.co.uk

2010 1458.45 62.262 660.81 a
2011 1509.6 62.649 681.33 a
2012 1559.5 63.067 687.96 e
2013 1631.3 63.488 676.57 g
2014 1717.1 63.912 715.27 g
2015 1813.5 64.338 728.87 g

The letter a refers to actual spending, e is the Treasury estimate and g an estimate from the website itself. Sadly I think the numbers rather underplay the story. The global economic slowdown will almost certainly increase welfare payments and so I would expect numbers for 2012-2015 to actually be a tad higher than those stated here.

But what I am sure that you have noticed is that UK Government spending (column rwo) is not in fact being cut at all but has steadily increased year on year since Call Me Dave was elected and will carry on increasing right throughout this Parliament. Incidentally UK spending per head of population (column 4) is also set to grow sharply.

Presumably because Call Me Dave is such a responsible guy he has found lots of extra revenues so that he can fund this and still cut the UK’s monstrous public debt? Er well I am afraid you might be a little disappointed there too. When Call Me Dave talks about “dealing with the deficit” he actually means “not dealing with the deficit at all.” At this point I turn to the excellent John Redwood MP writing about a year ago:

One of the neglected figures from the UK government’s last Budget book is the figure for total borrowing between 2010 and 2015. The government plans to borrow an extra £485 billion. That is more than the total UK state debt in 2004. People have not concentrated on this figure because there has been so much talk of spending cuts. Some have even thought that cutting the deficit means repaying the debt. That’s why telling them the UK is going through another substantial credit dependent period comes as a surprise.

The assumptions behind the strategy include the rapid acceleration of the UK’s current rate of growth. The five year forecasts assume a near doubling of the rate to 2.9% in both 2013 and 2014, with high growth continuing in 2015 at 2.8%. If by any chance this did not come true – owing perhaps to disappointment in global growth, or continuing struggles to sort out the banks – revenue will fall short of the target and the deficit will be proportionately higher. The government might still hit its target of eliminating the structural deficit, but overall borrowing could be higher as the cyclical deficit would be permitted to be higher under the rules.

It strikes me that Mr Redwood’s fears about rates of UK economic growth look to be rather bang on the money. Or lack of it. Since the UK is not growing as fast as Call Me Dave expected, tax receipts will be lower than expected and so given that he is not actually cutting public spending at all, but increasing it, the UK national debt will grow at a far greater rate than he has promised. How this can be seen as “dealing with the deficit” escapes me.

The Telegraph is a fine paper. After all it employs not only Christopher Booker but also my new pal, hot hackette Anna White, but how it can allow Call Me Dave to spout such piffle and claim to be responsible when he is in fact just telling bare faced lies, escapes me completely. I am sure that the delightful Anna would not have let him get away with such nonsense.

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About Tom Winnifrith
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Tom Winnifrith is the editor of TomWinnifrith.com. When he is not harvesting olives in Greece, he is (planning to) raise goats in Wales.
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