Public Service Funding: The Problem Will Become A Crisis

Today there are new warnings about funding shortages in education. The government retorts that they are spending more on education than ever before. Of course! There are more children, costs are rising and education is more sophisticated and more costly to deliver. I know of one secondary school which has had to write to parents asking for contributions because they having a funding shortfall of £1 million. On the news bulletins there are funding shortages in all public services. Only in overseas aid are the coffers flush.  Problems are mounting right across the piece, because after nine years of austerity absolutely nothing is properly funded.

This is not because public expenditure is out of control. It is because this government, now in power, either in coalition or with a majority, for seven years, has  promoted about the least efficient economical model it is possible to design. There is no end in sight to austerity because revenues are too low. There is too little wealth creation and too much asset inflation. Productivity is the worst in Europe and we are becoming accustomed to a low wage economy where incomes no longer rise. The tax system is way out of date and utterly unable to deliver what is needed to pay the bills. So government borrowing goes on and on, passing targeted end dates not by the month or the year, but by the parliament. We were promised a surplus at the end of the first. We are now aiming for the end of the third. That will be fifteen years!

And coming down the line is Brexit. That horror story is just beginning.