Tories to set out plans to cut £47bn from government spending
A future Conservative UK government would save £47 billion of taxpayers’ money by cutting spending on welfare, aid and social housing, the shadow chancellor will claim on Monday.
Sir Mel Stride is expected to set out proposals to slash Government spending when he addresses the Conservative party conference, saying the country cannot “keep spending money we simply do not have”.
Some £23 billion is expected to come from cuts to welfare, replacing payments to people with “low level” mental health conditions with treatment and barring non-citizens from claiming support among other reforms.
Benefit cap
Sir Mel is also set to commit his party to reversing any change to the two-child benefit cap, widely expected to be in line for abolition at next month’s Budget.
Promising to “never, ever make fiscal commitments without spelling out exactly how they will be paid for”, Sir Mel will say: “We’re the only party that gets it. The only party that will stand up for fiscal responsibility.
“We must get on top of government spending. We cannot deliver stability unless we live within our means.”
He will commit his party to cutting Civil Service numbers by around a quarter, saving £8 billion, and reducing aid spending by £7 billion to 0.1% of national income.
Under David Cameron, the Tories introduced a target of spending 0.7% of national income on overseas aid, which was reduced to 0.5% following the pandemic and then cut again by the current Labour Government to 0.3% to pay for greater defence spending.
The Conservatives will also pledge to reduce spending on social housing, arguing there will be less demand for it once non-citizens are barred from receiving council accommodation.
Green spending
Having vowed to repeal the Climate Change Act, Sir Mel will also set out plans to reduce green spending, including subsidies for heat pumps and electric vehicles.
The proposals have been welcomed by the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) but the think tank warned they ignored the “elephant in the room” of age-related spending such as pensions.
Earlier this year, the Office for Budget Responsibility warned the pensions triple lock, which remains Conservative policy, would prove “unsustainable” in the longer term.
Tom Clougherty, IEA executive director, said: “Ultimately, no political party is going to be able to balance the books only by cutting things their supporters don’t like.
“Long-term fiscal sustainability requires that we engineer a different trajectory for spending on pensions, social care, and old-age healthcare. Without that, other cuts are likely to amount to running to stand still.”
Labour Party chairwoman Anna Turley said: “The Tories let welfare bills, civil service numbers and asylum hotel use skyrocket on their watch – and they’ve never apologised. Now they want to rehash failed promises from their failed manifesto to try to solve the problems they caused.
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‘Tories to set out plans to cut £47bn from government spending …’
So their programme is yet more and even harsher austerity? Do they seriously think that voters will cheerfully embrace that agenda?
Um, because austerity has really helped? Clowns
They really think demand for council housing will go down. There are 1.33m households on Council House waiting lists in England and 94000 in Wales at the moment and that’s going up every day.
What we need is a mass council house building programme, like we did after the WWII and continued right up to the 1970s, paid for by additional borrowing and the abolition of the Right to Buy in England.
I agree, but borrowing would not be necessary, Jonathan. All government expenditure is funded by money creation done at the government’s behest by the Bank of England. There are no limits to money creation except the resources that can be made available. While there may be strategic reasons to borrow occasionally, it is unnecessary. As is austerity – a wholly corrupt political dogma without a meaningful economic rationale. Taxation does not fund anything. But it controls inflation – if the government and the BoE let it. Instead they attempt to control inflation by increasing interest rates – which has been… Read more »
And, er, there is no such thing as ‘taxpayers’ money’.
Just like the patron buying a beer: once they have bought the beer and paid the publican, it’s not the patron’s money anymore!
Not that it belongs to the publican for long either – they have to pay the brewery, staff, energy, rent etc…
We have no claim on the funds we pay in tax, and, at most, we can only use the electoral system to manage it.
The funds themselves are ‘destroyed’. Once the tax bill is paid, your tax account goes to a zero balance.
The party that brought austerity to millions in the UK would now try austerity on steroids.
This is not a UK led party, this is trump 101.
plucking random numbers out of thin air only works when you got no chance of being elected. If that 47bn was so doable then why didn’t they manage it at less inflated numbers during those 14 years 2010-24?
What bit don’t these clowns get, if the government isn’t spending the UK will grind to a halt, Government spending is our pay packet, councils can’t provide services if the government doesn’t spend. NHS can’t operate unless the government spends, houses, roads, infrastructure doesn’t get built unless the government spends. At the end of the day the government claws a lot of it back via taxation.