New analysis by Labour reveals that Conservative spending plans
would have cut £15 billion from the NHS budget, leaving the
health service broken. In contrast, Labour's budget has chosen to
prioritise the NHS and fixed the foundations of our country.
The Conservatives continually refused to provide any detail on
their alternative plan to source funding for public services,
instead simply saying that revenue spending would increase by one
per cent.
But the difference in spending in the Department of Health and
Social Care would have been £14.8 billion. That is the equivalent
to a 7.4 per cent budget cut – or 27,500 fewer nurses.
At the Department for Education, the £5.2 billion difference in
spending next year is the equivalent of a 5.6 per cent cut – or
26,300 fewer teachers.
And at the Home Office, the difference in spending next year of
£4.6 billion is the equivalent of nearly one quarter of the
department's budget (22 per cent) - or 52,000 fewer police
officers.
Today, the Conservatives have failed to back the difficult
decisions made by and on tax to fund public
services. They now have the opportunity to explain how they would
find money to spend on public services, or whether their plans
would mean cuts to public services in the billions of pounds.
Otherwise, they confirm these cuts. Given the Tories were not
prepared to make tough decisions across 14 years of government
managed decline, this is not surprising.
Labour is fixing the foundations to deliver change to rebuild
Britain, by fixing the NHS, rebuilding schools and making our
streets safer. All while ensuring working people don't face
higher taxes in their payslips.
Ends
Notes:
- Table 5.3 of the OBR's economic and fiscal outlook provides a
summary of departmental resource budgets for 2024/25 and 2025/26.
- We can compare 2024/25 budgets in table 5.3 with the previous
government's plans, published in the March 2024 budget.
- The previous government did not set out detailed spending
plans for 2025/26 by department, instead having an overall
resource spending assumption that RDEL would increase by 1% in
real terms in 2025/26.
- Assuming that the previous government increased each of the
March 2024 department resource budgets by 1% in real terms
provides us with an assumed 2025/26 resource budgets under
previous government plans. This has been calculated by adding 1%
to the OBR's forecast GDP deflator for 2025/26 of 2.4% (OBR EFO
Table A.3).
- The figures below compares these budgets with those set out
in the Autumn Budget 2024, illustrating.
- All departments are assumed to grow by 1% above the GDP
deflator.
A 7.4% cut to DHSC budgets, if applied across all areas of
spending, is equivalent to a reduction in the number of nurses of
27,500.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/2024/01/record-number-of-nurses-and-midwives-working-in-nhs/
A 5.6% cut to the Education budget, if applied across all areas
of spending, is equivalent to a reduction in the number of
teachers by 26,300.
https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-workforce-in-england
A 22% cut to the Home Office budget is the equivalent to a
reduction in the number of police officers of 52,000.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-workforce-england-and-wales-30-september-2023/police-workforce-england-and-wales-30-september-2023
