Key findings

  • Underpinned by an assessment that it must both deliver a surplus in order to reduce debt and do so via spending cuts, the government is set to reduce the size of the state towards historic lows
  • Subjective choices about the split between DEL and AME, consumption and investment and different services and groups fundamentally alter the shape of the state over time
  • In particular, the nature of the post-crisis consolidation – allied with demographic changes – is serving to increase the share of overall spending on older people and health while reducing the share going to working-age families and economic growth
  • This may or may not be the right balance to strike, but there is a danger that we fail to check in on these developments until after they occur – what do we want the state to do?

Further reading

The 12-month stretch
Where the Government has delivered – and where it has failed – during the Covid-19 crisis
·
Torsten Bell, Mike Brewer
Spending fast, taxing slow
Resolution Foundation analysis of Budget 2021
·
Torsten Bell, Mike Brewer, Nye Cominetti, Karl Handscomb, Kathleen Henehan, Lindsay Judge, Jack Leslie, Charlie McCurdy, Cara Pacitti, Hannah Slaughter, James Smith, Greg Thwaites, Daniel Tomlinson
How to throw good money after good
Budget 2021 and the challenge of delivering a rapid recovery from Covid-19
·
Jack Leslie, Charlie McCurdy, Cara Pacitti, James Smith
Matthew Whittaker
Matthew Whittaker
Adam Corlett
Adam Corlett Principal Economist
David Finch
David Finch Senior Research Fellow