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 Uncertainty Principle
Previewing the decisions to be taken at the Autumn Budget and Spending Review 2021
·
Jack Leslie, Krishan Shah, James Smith, Daniel Tomlinson
Nationally Insured?
New taxes and new spending to address key Department for Health and Social Care priorities
·
Torsten Bell, Mike Brewer, Nye Cominetti, Lindsay Judge, Krishan Shah, Daniel Tomlinson, Lalitha Try
To govern is to choose
The choices facing the Chancellor this autumn
·
Torsten Bell, Adam Corlett, Daniel Tomlinson
Matthew Whittaker
Matthew Whittaker
Adam Corlett
Adam Corlett Principal Economist
David Finch
David Finch Senior Research Fellow