Tory spending plans: where’s the cash?
“Something strange” happened at Prime Minister’s Questions last week, said Oliver Wiseman on Capx. A hard-left Labour leader attacked a Conservative Prime Minister for her recklessness in promising to increase NHS spending by 3.4%. It was quite “absurd” of Jeremy Corbyn to lecture anyone on fiscal responsibility; he only did so because his usual lines of attack had been closed off. Boosting NHS spending was a smart move, said Philip Collins in The Times. “More public spending please” was the message of last year’s election. After eight years of austerity, the cuts “had started to hit the bone”. By agreeing a generous increase for the health service, the Tories have insured themselves politically. When the next NHS crisis occurs, it will be less plausible to blame them for starving it of cash. And once the question of money is removed, Corbyn’s Labour “really has nothing to say about the NHS”.
But where is the money going to come from, asked Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. Theresa May suggested that some of it would be provided by a “Brexit dividend”. As everyone knows, this is “a fantasy”. The Government has accepted the official forecast that public finances will be weaker, not stronger, as a result of Brexit. Yet it’s now under significant pressure to increase spending across the entire spectrum of government: social care, policing, housing, education. The Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson, is apparently threatening to go to war with the PM over the condition of the Armed Forces. (“I made her – and I can break her,” Williamson is said to have boasted to service chiefs.) The answer, as May put it last week, is “taxpayers will have to contribute a bit more... to support the NHS”.
“This is madness,” said Allister Heath in The Daily Telegraph. The Conservatives’ success has always depended on keeping taxes low: now they are planning to increase them – not just by a little bit, but “by many, many billions”. Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, reportedly plans to freeze the personal allowance, dragging 400,000 more families into the 40p tax rate in the next couple of years. Taxes are already at their highest level since 1981-82. “Any further increase would put us on course to overtake the peak reached in 1969-70. How could a Tory government live with itself if it smashes that sorry record?” If Britain is to have a decent future after Brexit, it must adopt a “radically pro-growth” economic policy. “Tory MPS who want to keep their seats at the next election will have to tell the Chancellor, in no uncertain terms, that they will not tolerate this fiscal hara-kiri”.