Cuts? Spending on youngsters is RISING

THE amount of taxpayers’ cash spent on children has risen steeply in the last 20 years rather than being cut, a think-tank has found.

Despite widespread complaints by the Left about austerity and ‘Tory cuts’, state spending on children is higher now than in 2000.

Overall Government spending on schools, children’s services, state benefits for children and child health now tops £120billion a year – more than £10,000 for every child and more than 40 per cent higher than 2000, the Institute for Fiscal Studies found. In real terms spending is the same as it was in the mid-2000s before the economy was hit by recession.

Since 2010, Tory-led governments have cut spending from £11,300 for each child under Labour’s Gordon Brown but it is still higher than the £7,200 for each child spent in 2000.

The IFS said spending ‘has been largely protected in real terms’. Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield, said: ‘I hope this analysis will help move the debate on from one simply about the amount we spend on children to a debate about how we spend it.’