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Mar 26, 2025
Pensioners without heat are not the only problem that Kier Starmer and Rachel Reeves face, besides that utterky anemic 1% growth rate! And the argued 22 billion over-spend that is left beind, and in its place is ‘global uncertainty’. ?
Editor: Here from the BBC
Where does the £22bn claim come from?
The £21.9bn figure was in an audit published by the Treasury at the end of July – just a few weeks after Labour came to power.
The document looked at areas of public spending which are set to go over budget this year, including:
- Public sector pay rises
- Overspending on certain projects, such as supporting the asylum system
- Unforeseen costs, such as inflation being higher than expected
- Military assistance to Ukraine.
At the time, the OBR wrote that it had not been made aware of the extent of overspends and said it would investigate.
Was there a big overspend?
To put those figure into context, in the Spring Budget it was expected that total public spending this year would be £1,226bn. Either £9.5bn or £22bn would be a small proportion of that.
But by the standards of government overspends, either would be unusually large.
Spending was much higher than expected due to Covid in 2020 and 2021 and also almost £10bn higher than expected in 2023 because of inflation caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Outside those years there have not been overspends close to £9.5bn.
This piece was originally published on 3 September 2024 and has been updated following the OBR report that accompanied the 30 October Budget
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2e12j4gz0o
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