Aug 21 2007
There were no cuts and there will be no cuts
Labour constantly cry that Tories will cut schools and hospitals to pay for tax cuts. It is a Labour lie.
Throughout the period of Conservative government, every year Labour claimed the government was cutting health and education to pay for the tax cuts.
So what did happen?
In 1978-9 the state spent ??26.9 bn on health. By 1996-7 this had grown to ??49 billion (all figures in real terms)
In 1978-9 the state spent ??26.6bn on education.By 1996-7 this had increased to ??35 billion (all in real terms)
Overall spending had increased by 40% in real terms. In cash terms it had risen from ??73 bn to ??314 bn!
And income tax had been cut from 83% to 40% top rate, bringing in much more revenue from the rich.
Strange that, when Labour claimed we were cutting spending every year.
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Ah, to be fair, Labour does spend more money on Health and Education.
Unfortunately, because they are utterly incompetent this is wasted on bureaucracy, quango monitoring organisation, the bright idea du jour, or some other such rubbish.
I’ve worked with LEAs for years. The manpower is insane - in my area about half the people who work for the LEA don’t actually go near children - the other half includes teachers, TAs, pyschologists etc.
I understand the need for some support staff, but WTF are the rest of them doing.
PS: Your treatment by the BBC was diabolical. Don’t recall the idiot Prescott’s stupid ideas being illustrated by pictures of him thumping people (or shagging his secretary)
It really isn’t a question of how much is spend but rather how well the money is spent. Socialist, or in the case of New Labour, social opportunist governments, like to create layer upon layer of bureaucratic infrastructure, which eventually loses all command structure and becomes at best an inefficent gravy train. This in particular has been the fate of the NHS. The future Conservative government must set up a troubleshooting team to investigate and eradicate all unnecessary bureaucracy. So much money is lost and creamed off by an army of administators who milk the system.
Reply: I agree about the problem. It makes cutting wasteful and needless expenditure much easier because there is so much of it.
The best example of Labour’s incompetent spending goes on up here at that most famous of quango’s, the Rural non-Payments Agency. Many people I know or have met have worked there at one time or another. They basically spend millions of pounds hiring people to correspond with angry farmers who are not being given their EU subsidy payments.
Of course, farmers tend to vote Conservative and young working class folk in Newcastle and North Tyneside tend to vote Labour. I’m such a cynic, I really should be more positive, I’m sure the real reason that the farmers didn’t get the money the EU had sent them was because the computer said ‘no’ just like Margaret Beckett said.
Reply: Computers say what people tell them to say. Either the Minister gave the wrong instructions, or hired the wrong programmers.