Monday 9 March

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Contents  

Introduction ................................................................................................... 3

The Tories’ failure since 2010 ...................................................................... 5

The Tories’ spending plans .......................................................................... 8

The Real Tory plans: back to the 1930s with £70 billion of cuts .................. 9

Tory £70 billion cuts: what they really mean .............................................. 15

Tory £70 billion cuts: impact on departments ............................................. 19

Labour’s fairer and more balanced approach ............................................. 24

The Tory choice .......................................................................................... 25

Tory VAT bombshell ................................................................................ 25

The Tory risk to the NHS ......................................................................... 26

Conclusion .................................................................................................. 29

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Introduction The Tories’ risky and extreme plans are a threat to our public services and living standards. Working people cannot afford five more years of the Tories. New analysis reveals the true implications of the Tories’ extreme spending plans for the next Parliament:

• The Tories claim that their spending plans will mean £30 billion of cuts in the next Parliament, but the truth is that their plans are for more than double that - £70 billon of cuts

• This would have a crushing impact on non-protected areas of spending, leading to the smallest police force since comparable records began, the smallest Army since Cromwell and a third of older people in social care losing their entitlement to it

• These examples show that the Tories’ plans are extreme, unprecedented and

close to impossible to deliver, even for this Chancellor. Therefore, the Tories’ plans risk cutting currently-protected areas, including the NHS

The Tories now have a choice. They can either admit that their plans are so extreme that they could only be delivered by raising VAT or cutting the NHS, or commit to delivering these unprecedented, deeply destructive, and close to impossible cuts to other services. Tory spending plans In 2010 the Tories planned to balance the books by 2015 and David Cameron claimed that he was elected to deliver “rising living standards for all”. They failed to deliver these central pledges. Real wages are down by more than £1,600 a year and this failure to raise living standards means the Government is set to borrow over £200 billion more than planned in 2010. The Tories’ plans for the next Parliament now go much further than balancing the books and would instead take spending as a share of GDP back to levels last seen in the 1930s. They claim their plans would involve just £30 billion of spending cuts, but this is not true. Independent experts have already said that the Tories’ plans mean over £50 billion of cuts to public services and that they entail “cuts on a colossal scale” and pose a legitimate question as to whether they amount to “a fundamental reimagining of the role of the state”. Full impact of the Tories’ planned cuts Labour’s new analysis of the Tories’ spending plans shows that their plans in fact mean they would need to make cuts of £70 billion over the next Parliament – more than double what the Tories claim. Their spending plans are:

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• More extreme than this Parliament: bigger cuts in the next four years than the last five years. The UK is not even half way through the cuts needed to deliver the Tories’ plan.

• The most extreme in post-war history: a bigger fall in day-to-day public services spending as a share of GDP than in any four-year period since demobilisation at the end of the Second World War.

• The most extreme internationally: the largest consolidation planned among

advanced economies, according to the IMF. The Tories claim that they will make £12 billion of welfare savings to reduce the extent of cuts to public services. Their failure to control welfare spending since 2010 makes this claim implausible, and they have not set out how these savings can be delivered. Even when taking these savings in to account, however, their plans would still mean day-to-day spending on public services cut by £58 billion. These cuts would be undeliverable, whether allocated on the same basis as in this Parliament or evenly distributed amongst unprotected departments:

• If £58 billion of cuts were shared between government departments in the same proportions as they were in this Parliament, three government departments would cease to exist. This would mean closing all our embassies around the world, closing all jobcentres, back-to-work programmes and disability benefit testing, and all but ending central government funding for local government. This is clearly impossible to countenance.

• If £58 billion of cuts were instead distributed evenly across all non-protected budgets (excluding schools, the NHS and ODA budgets) this would mean a cut of 35 per cent over four years for every non-protected department. This would lead to the smallest police force since the late 1970s (the earliest available comparable data), the smallest army since Cromwell ruled Britain, and a third of older people in social care losing their entitlement to it. These plans are so extreme and unprecedented that they would be deeply destructive and close to impossible to achieve, even for this Chancellor.

The Real Tory Plans The consequences of Tory spending plans for public services are so extreme as to make them almost impossible to achieve. Therefore, in order to deliver George Osborne’s plans for a large overall budget surplus, the risk is that there would be cuts to currently-protected areas including the NHS, and tax rises, for example another rise in VAT.

• Given the total cuts to spending in the next Parliament are even deeper than those in this Parliament, the Tories could repeat the 2.5 per cent rise in VAT made in 2010.

The Tories want people to think they will ring-fence NHS spending, but, just like they broken promise not to reorganise the NHS in this Parliament, the Tories cannot be trusted to keep their promise to protect it in the next.

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• OECD countries which have undertaken consolidations on the scale planned by the Tories have seen a resultant reduction in health spending as a share of GDP which, if applied to health spending in the UK, would mean a real terms cut to the NHS of £10 billion over the next Parliament.

• Countries with similar size states to the 35 per cent targeted by the Tories have lower public health spending and require higher private funding of healthcare than is consistent with the NHS as we know it.

The Tories now have a choice. They can either admit that their plans would lead to the NHS being cut, or commit to delivering these unprecedented, deeply destructive and close to impossible cuts to other services.

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The Tories’ failure since 2010 The Tories have failed to deliver on their central pledges for this Parliament. Despite their cuts, they have failed to balance the books because they failed to deliver sustained rises in living standards. In their 2010 manifesto the Tories claimed they wanted to see an economy where people’s standard of living “rises steadily and sustainably”.

“We want to see an economy where not just our standard of living, but everyone’s quality of life, rises steadily and sustainably.” Conservative Party Manifesto 2010, p.viii

David Cameron later claimed that he was elected to deliver “rising living standards for all, not just rewards for those in high finance”.

“When I think back to the last election, this was the change that people most wanted to see. Economic growth that meant rising living standards for all, not just rewards for those in high finance.” David Cameron, Daily Telegraph, 7 May 2012

The reality is that wages after inflation are down by more than £1,600i a year since 2010, families have lost £1,127ii a year on average as a result of tax and benefit changes introduced by the Tory-led Government, and this is set to be the first Parliament since the 1920s that people are worse off at the end of the Parliament than they were at the beginning.iii Meanwhile, the gap between UK productivity per hour worked and the rest of the G7 grew to 17 per cent in 2013, the widest productivity gap since 1992.iv Since 2010 the UK’s export performance has been 16th in the G20 and 22nd out of 28 EU countries.v And in 2013, the UK had the second lowest rate of business investment as a share of GDP among the 24 OECD countries for which there was available data.vi The Tories’ failure on living standards has led to a failure to meet deficit reduction targets. Rising living standards are fundamental to our ability to deliver strong public finances and deal with the UK’s deficit. In 2010 David Cameron pledged that his Government would balance the books by 2015.

“In five years’ time, we will have balanced the books.” David Cameron, speech to CBI, 25 October 2010, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pms-speech-on-creating-a-new-economic-dynamism

But they have failed. The experience of the current Parliament has shown us that low and stagnating pay has resulted in weaker than expected tax revenues, which has meant the Government has failed to meet its commitment to balance the books by the end of the Parliament. Instead, the deficit is currently forecast to be £75.9 billion in 2015-16vii while public sector net debt as a proportion of GDP is not set to begin to fall until 2016-17, breaking the Government’s original supplementary target.viii The Tory-led Government is now set to borrow over £200 billion more than planned in 2010.

7     When people have lower wages and are unable to get the work hours they need, tax receipts are lower, tax credits and benefit payments are higher and borrowing is higher. Income tax and National Insurance receipts across the Parliament are set to fall short of their 2010 expectations by more than £95 billion. Despite stronger growth in the last year the latest forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility painted a worsening picture for income tax and NICs receipts in the next Parliament. In December it revised down its March forecasts for receipts by £52.9 billion cumulatively across the forecast period. £37.2 billion of this has been attributed to weaker average wages with the OBR describing subdued earnings growth as “the key driver in the lower forecast for PAYE and NIC receipts.”ix Key changes to the income tax and NICs forecast since March £ billion 2014-15 2015-16 2016-17 2017-18 2018-19 TOTAL March forecast 276.5 291.8 315.3 333.3 351.4 December forecast

271.9 283.6 303.9 319.7 336.2

Change -4.5 -8.2 -11.4 -13.6 -15.2 -52.9 Of which: Average earnings

-2.8

-7.2

-9.3

-8.9

-9.0 -37.2

OBR, Economic and Fiscal Outlook, March 2014, Table 4.10, p.119 The impact of living standards on the deficit is not just felt via tax receipts. For all George Osborne’s claims to be able to cut welfare spending, the Tories have failed to get the welfare bill under control in this Parliament. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said, benefit spending in 2015-16 is set to be “virtually unchanged in real terms since 2010-11”x. In fact, the Tory-led Government is set to spend more than £25 billion more on social security than planned in 2010.xi Much of this can be attributed to a failure to deliver welfare reforms. The Tories’ £12.8 billion flagship Universal Credit is nothing short of a farce. £130 million of taxpayers’ money has already been written off or ‘written down’ and, while Iain Duncan Smith once promised that more than a million people would be claiming Universal Credit by April 2014,xii the actual figure is just over 31,000.xiii At the current rate of progress, it will take 1,605 years to roll out Universal Credit. That’s the year 3618. There is also evidence that an increasing reliance on low-paid work and stagnating wages mean that more working people are relying on social security, particularly housing benefit and in-work tax credits. The number of people needing to claim housing benefit while in work has risen by over 400,000 between May 2010 and May 2014.xiv That means that the Government has spent around £1.8 billion more than planned on housing benefit for people in work over the life of this Parliament.xv

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The Tories’ spending plans In response to their failure, the Tories have set out plans for the next Parliament that go much further than balancing the books and would instead take Britain back to 1930s spending as a share of GDP. But they refuse to be honest about how extreme their plans are. George Osborne has said the Tories’ deficit reduction plans will be met entirely through spending reductions. He has committed to delivering an absolute surplus in his 2014 Budget. His choice when faced with significantly poorer forecasts in the 2014 Autumn Statement was to stick doggedly to his target and make up the difference entirely from deeper spending cuts. The Tories claim: £30 billion of cuts The Tories have claimed that their cuts in the next Parliament will be smaller than in this Parliament.

“In this parliament we will have made £100 billion of savings while cutting income tax by £10.5 billion. In the next parliament we plan to make £25 billion of savings while making £7.2 billion in income tax cuts.” David Cameron, The Times, 30 October 2014

They claim that their plans mean a further £30 billion of deficit reduction.

“Well, what I’ve said it there’s around £30 billion of consolidation required.” George Osborne, Newsnight, 22 January 2015

“We've said there's another £30 billion of adjustments that needs to be made” David Cameron, Andrew Marr Show, 4 January 2015

The Tories have said that £5 billion of the £30 billion will come from tax avoidance and tax evasion measures, £12 billion will come from cutting welfare and £13 billion will come from cutting departmental spending “along the same lines as what we’ve achieved in the last five years.”

“We've said five of the 30 billion comes from continuing the war against tax evasion and tax avoidance, that leaves 25 billion, of which 12 billion should be reductions in welfare spending and we've already given some answers there, and the remaining 13 billion, that comes from, from continuing for two more years, the reductions and efficiencies in departmental spending, in government departments, along the same lines as what we've achieved in the last five years.” David Cameron, Andrew Marr Show, 4 January 2015

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The Real Tory plans: back to the 1930s with £70 billion of cuts The extremity of the Tories plans has been outlined by independent experts, who have rejected the Tories’ claims. Both the OBR and IFS have said that the Tories would take public spending to a share of national income not seen since the 1930s, before there was an NHS. The Tories’ plans would leave the UK with state spending at 35 per cent of GDP, which is a historic low. But the Tories haven’t only got plans to take public spending back to levels last seen in the 1930s – they’ve also made billions of pounds of unfunded tax commitments. That is why new analysis by Labour shows that Tory plans would mean £70 billion of cuts in the next Parliament – more than double the £30 billion they claim. Independent experts’ views In its latest Economic and Fiscal Outlook, the Office for Budget Responsibility has said that the Tory-led Government’s spending plans would reduce total public spending as a proportion of GDP to 35.2 per cent by 2019-20 – a level last seen in the 1930s.

“…total public spending is now projected to fall to 35.2 per cent of GDP in 2019-20, taking it below the previous post-war lows reached in 1957-58 and1999-00 to what would probably be its lowest level in 80 years.” Office for Budget Responsibility, Economic and Fiscal Outlook, December 2014, p.6-7, http://cdn.budgetresponsibility.independent.gov.uk/December_2014_EFO-web513.pdf

As Robert Chote, Chair of the OBR, has explained, George Osborne’s decision (or “chosen assumption” by the Government) to cut public spending to 1930s levels is what allows the Tories to plan for a surplus of over £20 billion in 2019-20.

“With the forecast rolling on another year in this Autumn Statement, we now project a total budget surplus of more than £20 billion in 2019-20, the final year of the next Parliament. This relies on the Government’s chosen assumption for the path of total public spending beyond the end of the current spending review in 2015-16. This assumption now takes total public spending to its lowest share of GDP in 80 years.” Robert Chote, December 2014 briefing, 3 December 2014, http://budgetresponsibility.org.uk/wordpress/docs/Dec_2014_speakingnote-5web23.pdf

The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has reiterated this point saying that the Government is now planning “cuts on a colossal scale”, which would take “total government spending to its lowest level as a proportion of national income since before the last war.”

“How do we get to this sunlit upland in which we have a budget surplus? Spending cuts on a colossal scale is how, taking total government spending to its lowest level as a proportion of national income since before the last war.” Paul Johnson, IFS, introductory remarks, 4 December 2014, http://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/budgets/as2014/as2014_johnson.pdf

10    As the IFS has said, the plans set out by George Osborne require cuts that mean the public are justified in asking whether they amount to “a fundamental reimagining of the role of the state”.

“One cannot just look at the scale of implied cuts going forward and say they are unachievable. But it is surely incumbent upon anyone set on taking the size of the state to its smallest in many generations to tell us what that means. How will these cuts be implemented? What will local government, the defence force, the transport system, look like in this world? Is this a fundamental reimagining of the role of the state?” Paul Johnson, Institute for Fiscal Studies, Autumn Statement briefing, 4 December 2014, http://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/budgets/as2014/as2014_johnson.pdf

The Tories’ 35 per cent state: historical and international comparisons The Tories’ plans would leave the UK with state spending at 35 per cent of GDP, and the impact on our public service and living standards would be extreme. This is a historic low. Between 1970-71 and 2014-15, total managed expenditure (TME) as a percentage of GDP has averaged 41.7 per cent. Under Margaret Thatcher (1979/80 to 1990/91) TME as a percentage of GDP averaged 42.9 per cent.xvi According to IMF figures, in 2014 the OECD countries where general government total expenditure was under 35 per cent of GDP were Korea, Chile, Mexico, Switzerland and New Zealand. Analysis of these countries’ public spending show high levels of inequality and low levels of social protection. Two of those countries – New Zealand and Mexico – have been identified as being the OECD countries most affected by inequality. Rising inequality is estimated to have knocked more than 10 percentage points off growth in Mexico and New Zealand.xvii In Mexico, public spending on social protection is the lowest in the OECD area, accounting for 7.4 per cent of GDP, about one-third of the OECD average of 21.9 per cent. Chile has the highest level of income inequality and the fourth highest level of relative poverty in the OECD area and Chilean public spending on social protection is the third lowest in the OECD. xviii The Tories’ unfunded tax cuts The Tories haven’t only got plans to take public spending back to levels last seen in the 1930s – they’ve also made billions of pounds of unfunded tax commitments. At Conservative Party Conference last year David Cameron made two commitments for the next Parliament.xix He said that the Tories would:

1. Raise the Personal Allowance to £12,500 2. Raise the higher rate threshold to £50,000

The Tories have said that the combined cost of both of these measures is £7.2 billion, but this is only if they do not take effect for a single full year of the next Parliament and are introduced in 2020-21. David Cameron has suggested that they could come much earlier.

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“We will set out the exact details in each Budget. As long as you have got a clear plan and a clear pathway, you don’t have to wait until Britain is back in the black before you make progress with these tax reductions. But I’m not announcing now what will happen in each Budget. I’ll leave that to the Chancellor.” David Cameron, The Guardian, 3 October 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/03/david-cameron-tax-cut-election

On a cautious assumption that these tax cuts were delivered in the final full year of the Parliament, 2019-20, they would cost £9.9 billion a year according to independent experts at the House of Commons library – almost £3 billion more than the Tories claim they would. The Tories are yet to say how they will fund these pledged tax cuts. This is despite the fact that in Opposition the Tories were scathing about unfunded tax cuts, describing them as a “tax con”. In November 2008 David Cameron said that “you can’t talk about tax reduction unless you can show how it is paid for, the public aren’t stupid.”

“In each case we have funded the tax reduction and the message that Gordon Brown has got to respond is well how are you going to fund you tax reductions because you are right what we are saying ours are tax cuts, at the moment what he is talking about is a tax con. That’s the defence, you can’t talk about tax reduction unless you can show how it is paid for, the public aren’t stupid.” David Cameron, Today Programme, 11 November 2008

David Cameron also told a press conference that the British people “aren’t fools” and that “if you pretend as a politician you can wave some tax cuts at them and not tell them how they’re going to be funded they just won’t believe you”.

“I think the British people are wise, I don’t think they are fools, I think that you know if you pretend as a politician you can wave some tax cuts at them and not tell them how they’re going to be funded they just won’t believe you. It’s tax cons that have got the Prime Minister in so much trouble in the past. Proper tax cuts you’ve got to say where there money is coming from”. David Cameron, press conference, 11 November 2008

On the same day George Osborne said that if the Government could not explain how a tax cut was going to be paid for it was “a complete tax con, and all of us are going to have to pay with higher taxes later.”

“Well if he doesn’t explain how it is going to be paid for then it isn’t a tax cut, it is a complete tax con, and all of us are going to have to pay with higher taxes later.” George Osborne, GMTV, 11 November 2008

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The Tories’ £70 billion cuts plan The Tories claim their plans involve £30 billion of cuts. New analysis by Labour shows that, in fact, when taking into account their unfunded tax cuts, Tory plans would require them to make cuts of £70 billion in the next Parliament. £70 billion: background The Tories have said that they will have a £23 billion surplus by 2019-20 and that they will introduce tax cuts in the next Parliament, but have not set out how they will be funded. Taking these together and assuming the Tories stick to their plan and achieve the surplus on the timeframe they have set out, the true extent of cuts the Tories can be revealed. The table below shows how David Cameron’s claims of £30 billion of cuts in the next parliament are false, and that the Tories’ 1930s spending plans would in fact require them to make £70 billion of cuts over the four years from 2015-16 to 2019-20. The following steps have been taken in the calculation.xx Step 1: £30 billion The total cut to public spending the Tories claim they are going to make after the election is £30 billion. Step 2: £37 billion The Tories’ claim, however, is not for the whole Parliament, but for the first two years only. If we look at their own spending forecasts over the next four years, covering the period from 2015-16 to 2019-20, that takes the Tories’ cut to public spending to £37 billion. Step 3: £55 billion But this only covers overall spending. Spending on pensions and social security is forecast to risexxi and this means bigger spending cuts are required to meet the Tories’ overall spending reduction. This takes the Tories’ cuts to £55 billion. Step 4: £59 billon But capital spending is also set to rise.xxii Therefore, to meet the Tories’ spending plans they need to make even bigger cuts to day-to-day spending. Taking this in to account takes the figure to £59 billon. This figure is confirmed by the IFS in their 2015 Green Budget.xxiii

13    Step 5: £60 billion The Tories are committed to increasing spending on Overseas Development Assistance (ODA). This increase would mean that the cut to unprotected areas increases to £60 billion. This is because ODA spending must rise slightly faster than inflation in order to stay constant at 0.7 percent of Gross National Income. Step 6: £70 billon These plans so far are all spending plans set out by the current Government. Over and above this, the Tories also claim that they will make tax cuts. These are unfunded. We have assumed they are introduced in the final full year of the next Parliament in 2019-20. If introduced then they would cost £10 billion a year, according to the House of Commons Library. The Tories have said these tax cuts would be achieved with cuts to public spending. This would therefore take the total cuts the Tories would need to make to day-to-day spending to £70 billon.

£25bn £30bn £35bn £40bn £45bn £50bn £55bn £60bn £65bn £70bn

£30bn

£37bn

£55bn

£59bn

£60bn£70bn

Tory plans including tax cuts coming in in the final full year of the next Parliament, funded through departmental spending cuts.

Tory claim on their total public spending cuts after the election.

Tory plans for the Parliament, not just the first two years.

Tory plans factoring in protections to schools, the NHS and ODA.

Adding in forecast rising capital spending.

Adding in forecast rising welfare spending.

HOW THE TORIES ARE PLANNING £70BN OF CUTS

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Tory £70 billion cuts: what they really mean The total of Tory cuts to day-to-day spending across the Parliament is £70 billon. These spending cuts are:

• More extreme than this Parliament: bigger cuts in the next four years than the last five years. The UK is not even half way through the cuts needed to deliver the Tories’ plan.

• The most extreme in post-war history: a bigger fall in spending as a share of GDP than in any four year period since demobilisation at the end of the Second World War.

• The most extreme internationally: the largest consolidation planned among

advanced economies, according to the IMF. Even generously taking into account the Tories’ implausible claims of welfare savings, the Tories planned cuts to departmental spending are over four times the cuts they claim they are going to make. Larger departmental cuts than the Tories claim The Tories claim their plans will require a further £30 billion of cuts. They have said that £5 billion of the £30 billion will come from tax avoidance and tax evasion measures, £12 billion will come from cutting welfare and £13 billion will come from cutting departmental spending. The Tories claim that their spending plans will mean £30 billion of cuts in the next Parliament, but the truth is that their plans are for more than double that - £70 billon of cuts. Within this, cuts to departmental spending are in fact four times higher than the Tories claim. The Tories’ failure to tackle tax avoidance in this Parliamentxxiv and the absence of any detail as to how their projected £5 billion savings in the next Parliament will be reached means that this can be discounted as an unrealistic assumption. The Tories’ failure to achieve their welfare savings in this Parliament and the fact that they have so far only set out details of where a fraction of this will come from makes their projected £12 billion extremely doubtful. In order to demonstrate the extremity of their planned cuts to public services spending, however, we have assumed that these savings are met. Taking into account the Tory claims of welfare savings means the cuts they would make to day-to-day public services spending would reduce from £70 billion to £58 billion.

16    Therefore, even generously taking in to account the Tories’ implausible projected welfare savings, the Tories are planning cuts to day-to-day public services spending over four times the £13 billion of cuts they claim they are going to make. UK not even half way through Focusing solely on day-to-day spending on public services, the cuts in this Parliament were £38 billion. This means that the Tories’ planned cuts of £58 billion to day-to-day spending on public services in the next Parliament go much deeper than in the last parliament, especially since these cuts will be over four years rather than the £38 billion which were delivered over five years. The UK is therefore not even half way through the cuts needed to deliver the Tories’ plan to return state spending as a share of GDP back to 1930s levels. Historic context The OBR has outlined that the Government’s forecast spending plans represent the greatest contraction since the Second World War.

“Relative to the size of the economy, nominal government consumption is forecast to fall from 20.2 per cent of GDP in 2013 to 14.7 per cent of GDP at the end of the forecast period, the lowest level on record in consistent national income data back to 1948 – and the lowest since 1938 using the Bank of England’s historical dataset (Chart 3.36) … The four successive year-on-year reductions in nominal government consumption during the next parliament – implied by the Government’s policy assumption for total spending beyond 2015-16 – would be the first since the Second World War.” Office of Budget Responsibility, Economic and Fiscal Outlook, December 2014, p.80

Furthermore, the Tories’ plans represent a greater consolidation across the next Parliament than in any Parliament since at least the Second World War.

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Source: Bank of England, Three Centuries of Data; Office for Budget Responsibility, Economic and Fiscal Outlook, December 2014; House of Commons Library analysis

International comparisons The IFS has shown that the Tories’ plans for the next Parliament would mean the largest fiscal consolidation between 2015 and 2019 of any of the 32 advanced economies.

Source: Institute for Fiscal Studies, Green Budget 2015, Table 1.3, p.28

18     This projection even underestimates the scale of the Tories’ planned spending cuts since it pre-dates the Government’s 2014 Autumn Statement. As the IFS has pointed out, the IMF figures forecasts “actually miss out some of the austerity now planned in the UK” as they were compiled in October 2014 and therefore “do not include the announcement in December 2014 that the Government has pencilled in a further squeeze on public spending in 2019-20”.xxv Independent experts question Tory plans Independent experts have called into question the deliverability of Tory plans.

• Sir Howard Davies, a former MPC member, said the Government would “find it very hard to achieve the cuts forecast”.

“I suspect a Conservative government would find it very hard in practice to achieve the cuts forecast in the Autumn Statement, which are a statement of political aspiration rather than a workable plan.” Sir Howard Davies, The Financial Times, 1 January 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/nov/30/george-osborne-billions-extra-nhs-funding

• Dame Kate Barker, a former MPC member, says the plans could have

“unwelcome consequences” for public services.

“Yes, as the public spending plans look very hard to deliver. Yes, it does matter as the present plans could have unwelcome consequences for a range of public services, especially those delivered by local authorities.” Dame Kate Barker, The Financial Times, 1 January 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/nov/30/george-osborne-billions-extra-nhs-funding

• John van Reenen, director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the

London School of Economics has spoken of an “ideological choice” behind the “unnecessarily harsh” plans.

“Second, current plans for deficit reduction through 2020 the Chancellor is proposing are unnecessarily harsh. The implied cuts in unprotected DEL spending (transport, justice, local government, etc) are on the order of 26%, even greater than they have been over the previous 5 years. The shrinking of the state to this size is an ideological choice.” John van Reenen, The Financial Times, 1 January 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/nov/30/george-osborne-billions-extra-nhs-funding

19    

Tory £70 billion cuts: impact on departments The Tories’ spending plans would have a crushing impact on day-to-day public services spending. The Tory plans are of such a scale that they are impossible to deliver if distributed on the same basis as they were in this Parliament, and would be unprecedented and deeply destructive if distributed evenly across non-protected departments. Distributing cuts on the same basis as this Parliament If £58 billion of cuts fell on government departments on the same basis as they did in this Parliament, a total of three government departments would cease to exist:

• The Department for Transport budget would drop to -£3.1 billion, which would

abolish publicly funded maintenance of our national road and half of our rail routes would no longer operate.

• The Foreign and Commonwealth Office budget would drop to -£0.8 billion, closing down all our embassies and consulates around the world and our presence in international organizations like the United Nations.

• The Department for Work and Pensions budget would drop to -£7.8 billion, meaning closing all jobcentres, ending back-to-work programmes and disability benefit testing.

• The Department for Communities and Local Government budget would drop

to £2.2 billion, all but ending all central government funding for local government.

• The Ministry of Justice budget would drop to £1.5 billion, which would all but

end funding for prisons, legal aid and courts. Departmental resource budgets (£bn) if cuts fall on same basis as current Parliament 2015-16

resource budget (2019-20 prices)

Share of reduction this Parliament

Reduction needed in next Parliament if on same basis

2019-20 resource budget (2019-20 prices)

Department for Transport £2.4bn 9.4% -£5.5bn -£3.1bn Foreign and Commonwealth Office £1.2bn 3.4% -£2.0bn -£0.8bn

Work and Pensions £6.6bn 24.7% -£14.4bn -£7.8bn Communities and Local Govt £13.7bn 19.7% -£11.5bn £2.2bn Justice £6.7bn 9.1% -£5.3bn £1.5bn This is clearly impossible to countenance.

20    

Distributing cuts evenly across non-protected departments If we examine the impact of distributing spending cuts evenly across all budgets which are not protected, we see spending reductions that are unprecedented, deeply destructive, and close to impossible to deliver.

• If £58 billion of cuts were distributed evenly across all budgets which are not protected (excluding schools, the NHS and ODA budgets) it would mean a cut of 35 per cent over four years for all non-protected departments. This would lead to the smallest police force since comparable records began, the smallest army since Cromwell, and over a third of the older people receiving social care losing their entitlement to it.

Below is an area-by-area analysis of the Tories’ spending plans for 35 per cent cuts for some non-protected areas. Impact on defence In Opposition the Tories promised to boost UK defence forces. They consistently called for a larger Army, calling specifically for three additional battalions.xxvi They stated that any cuts to the Royal Navy would be ‘a betrayal of our heritage and downright irresponsible in a dangerous age’.xxvii

Now, the Army is seeing a reserve recruitment crisis rather than the major increase that was meant to fill the gap left by full time troop reductions and there are capability gaps at a time when the threats our country faces are growing.

In the next Parliament the Tories plans would be equivalent to:

• 34,500 fewer soldiers in the Army. This would take the overall size of the Army

down to 56,600.

• 60,800 fewer personnel in the Armed Forces, taking the overall size of the Armed forces down to 98,900.

• The smallest Army since Cromwell and the smallest Armed Forces since 1750. These extreme cuts to the Army and Armed Forces would fundamentally impact on the UK’s ability to project power around the world at a time when we face multiple threats of increasing complexity.

The UK’s capability to undertake peace keeping or preventative military action would be severely limited, while a smaller overall force would in turn shrink the size of our Special Forces, which are more important than ever to our national security. This would also raise serious questions about our ability to meet existing operational commitments. Methodology We have available data for the size of the Army and Armed Forces up until 2013-14.xxviii

21    In this parliament, a 16 per cent real reduction in the MOD resource budget led to a fall in the Army of 15,200 and a fall in the Armed Forces of 26,700. On this basis, a 35 per cent reduction in the MOD resource budget will result in a fall in troop numbers of 34,500 in Army personnel and 60,800 in overall Armed Forces personnel. This would take the size of the Army down to 56,600 (the smallest since Cromwell)xxix, and the size of the overall Armed Forces down to 98,800 (the smallest since 1750).xxx Impact on police Before the election, David Cameron promised to protect the frontline.

"What I can tell you is any cabinet minister, if I win the election, who comes to me and says: ‘Here are my plans’ and they involve frontline reductions, they’ll be sent straight back to their department to go away and think again." David Cameron, The Andrew Marr Show, 2 May 2010

His promise lies in tatters. There are now almost 17,000xxxi fewer police officers protecting our streets and communities than in 2010. In the next Parliament the Tories plans would be equivalent to:

• 29,900 police officers lost • 6,700 PCSOs lost

Losing nearly 30,000 officers, the equivalent of losing almost the entire Metropolitan police force, will mean the Tories would have cut police numbers by a third (from 144,000 to 96,500) between 2010 and 2020.

This would take the overall numbers of police on the streets well below 100,000 and well below the levels of the late 1970s (the earliest available comparable data), when there were 110,000 officersxxxii .

In 2010 the ratio of officers per 1,000 population was 2.6. These cuts would mean the police force was heading towards a ratio of officers per 1,000 population of 1.7, close to the ratio of 1.5 in the 1930sxxxiii .

This comes at a time when more serious and violent crimes including child abuse, rape and domestic violence are being reported, the terror threat has grown, and there has been a massive increase in online crime. Now is not the time to risk this kind of Tory attack on frontline policing. Methodology In this parliament, a 19 per cent real terms cut to the police budget let to a reduction in police officers of almost 17,000.xxxiv On the same basis, a 35 per cent reduction would lead to a reduction in police officers of 29,900. This is confirmed by the House of Commons library. In 2010 the ratio of officers per 1,000 population was 2.6. These cuts would mean the police force was heading towards a ratio of officers per 1,000 population of 1.7, close to the ratio of 1.5 in the 1930s.

22     Impact on social care In Opposition, David Cameron promised that this commitment to the NHS would be “more than matched by the spending on social care”.

“And so I pledge that a Conservative government will increase spending on the NHS year on year. Any reduction in the demand for acute care as the nation gets genuinely healthier, will be more than matched by the spending on social care and long-term care that longer lives and good health demand. A Conservative Government will always support the NHS with the money it needs.” David Cameron, Speech to the NHS Confederation, 21 June 2007

In Government, the Tories have made deep cuts to local authority budgets which have resulted in £3.5 billion being taken out of adult social care budgets – at the same time as they have chosen to waste £3 billion on a top down reorganisation of the NHS.

“ADASS President David Pearson said: “This is the third year of continuing cash reductions and the fifth year of real terms reductions in spending. Since 2010 spending on social care has fallen by 12 per cent at a time when the number of those looking for support has increased by 14 per cent. This has forced departments to make savings of 26 per cent in their budgets – the equivalent of £3.53 billion over the last four years. Nothing can be starker than the truth these figures point to.” Association of Directors of Adults Social Services (ADASS), 2 July 2014, http://www.adass.org.uk/social-care-services-unsustainable-adass/

In addition, since 2009/10 the number of older people receiving home-delivered meals has more than halved – a fall of 59 per cent.

“Some of the most significant falls were in meals (59 per cent reduction or 54,795 fewer individuals) and day care (35 per cent reduction or 36,480 individuals). Only the number of older people receiving direct payments appeared to increase and even then only by 10,250 (an increase of 20 per cent in the two years between 2010/11 and 2012/131).” The Health Foundation Trust and Nuffield Trust, March 2014, Focus On: Social care for older people Reductions in adult social services for older people in England, p. 7

Pressures on the social care sector are having a knock-on effect in the NHS, ramping up the pressure on services already suffering from four years of Tory neglect and mismanagement. Increasing numbers of frail elderly people are ending up trapped in more expensive hospital beds when they don’t need to be – delayed discharges due to a lack of social care in the home are at record levels. More elderly people are turning to A&E because they are unable to access the care and support they require.

With the cuts that have taken place in this Parliament, the number of old people in social care has already fallen by 210,000 since 2010-11. It is therefore safe to assume that given that the cuts in the next Parliament are even deeper, they would have to be delivered through further restrictions on eligibility. In the next Parliament the Tories plans would be equivalent to:

• 260,000 fewer older people would be receiving social care – a third of all older people receiving care. This would take the number of people receiving care down to 480,000.

23    These extreme cuts would see eligibility to care services further restricted, meaning hundreds of thousands of vulnerable older people missing out, even though they might struggle with daily living activities such as getting washed or dressed, or making a meal. Already there have been dramatic reductions in the number of those getting support with conditions such as a physical disability, frailty, mental health problem or visual impairments. These extreme plans risk many more with these conditions not being able to access care. Methodology We have available data for social care numbers up until 2013-14.xxxv If we assume that in 2014-15 and 2015-16 the 65+ social care caseload falls at the same rate as it has from 2010-11 to 2013-14 (seven per cent a year), we can assume that in 2015-16 the caseload will be 740,000. In this Parliament there have been reductions in the number of those getting support with conditions such as physical disability, frailty, mental health problem or visual impairments, as well as access to certain services like home care, day care, meals on wheels and home adaptations. With these reductions which have taken place in this parliament, the number of old people in social care has already fallen by 210,000 since 2010-11. It is therefore safe to assume that given that the cuts in the next parliament are even deeper, they would have to be delivered through further restrictions on eligibility. We have worked out that a 35 per cent reduction in resource budgets for unprotected areas of spending, like social care, could lead to a third of old people losing their social care – 260,000 people. This would take the overall number of old people in social care to 480,000.

24    

Labour’s fairer and more balanced approach

There is a fundamental link between model of growth, their impact on living standards and our ability to reduce the deficit. A new approach to growth, as set out in Labour’s better, fairer plan, will help more people into better paid jobs, with rising wages which will lead to increased tax revenues and lower social security spending. But tough decisions will also be needed. In 1997, Labour was able to plan our manifesto on the basis of rising departmental spending. In 2015 we will have to plan on the basis of falling departmental spending. The current Government’s spending plans in 2015-16 will be our starting point. Any changes to spending for that year will be fully funded and set out in advance in our manifesto. Beyond 2015-16, departments outside of a few protected areas will see falling budgets until we have met our fiscal objectives. Labour will build a strong economic foundation. We will: • Balance the books and cut the deficit every year with a surplus on the current

budget and falling national debt as soon as possible in the next Parliament. • Reverse the cut to the top rate of tax so the highest one per cent of earners pay

a little more to help get the deficit down. • Stop paying the Winter Fuel Allowance to the richest five per cent of pensioners

and cap child benefit rises at one per cent for two years. • Close loopholes that cost the Exchequer billions of pounds a year, increasing the

transparency and rigour of the tax system. • Have no proposals in our manifesto for any new spending paid for by additional

borrowing. • Cap structural social security spending in each spending review so it is properly

controlled. • Examine every pound spent by government through our Zero-Based Review of

spending, which is already identifying significant savings and rooting out waste. • Introduce a tax on high value properties over £2 million to help raise £2.5 billion a

year for an NHS Time to Care Fund as part of our plan to save and transform the NHS.

25    

The Tory choice The Tories now have a choice. They can either admit that their plans would lead to these unprecedented, deeply destructive, and close to impossible to deliver cuts. Or they can admit that it will be impossible to protect the NHS on the basis of their extreme spending plans. A further rise in VAT would reduce the exact scale of cuts, but so drastic are they that this would remain the choice the Tories face. Tory VAT bombshell In 2010 the Tories promised that they had no plans to increase VAT.

“Well we have no plans to put up VAT, it’s not part of our plans. Our plans are to cut wasteful spending, to stop the national insurance increase.” David Cameron, BBC clip, 5 April 2010

They then raised VAT to 20 per cent just two months later in the June 2010 Budget. The result has been an additional cost to families of £1,800 since 2010xxxvi . The Tories have refused to rule out a VAT rise in the next Parliament, with George Osborne simply again saying the Tories “don’t have any plans to” – exactly what they said in 2010.

Andrew Marr: I don’t want to be entirely Mr Grumpy, but looking ahead at the eye-watering scale of the deficit reduction still to be done, I must ask you some direct questions. First of all, are you going to raise VAT?

George Osborne: Well we don’t have any plans to Andrew Marr Show, 30 November 2014, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/30111402.pdf

The Tories have a history of denying plans to increase VAT – and then doing exactly that. And given the extremity of their spending plans for the next Parliament, the Tories could do the same again. And George Osborne has said that if taxes were to rise as part of a deficit reduction plan, raising VAT would be his first choice.

"But when you've got a very large budget deficit and you've in the middle of a European sovereign debt crisis - and you've decided that at least part of dealing with the deficit has to come from tax rises - then I think VAT presents itself as the choice." George Osborne, BBC News, 4th January 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12110945

26    

The Tory risk to the NHS The consequences of the Tories’ plans are so extreme as to make them close to impossible to deliver while maintaining current protections for areas such as the NHS. The Tories want people to think they will ring-fence NHS spending and increase investment, but their spending plans are so extreme that there is a real risk that the Chancellor will be forced to break his promise to ring-fence the NHS. After their broken pledge not to have a top-down re-organisation of the NHS in this Parliament, the British people know that the Tories have form when it comes to broken promises on the NHS. If the Tories were to abandon the ring-fence, this could lead to £10 billion being cut from the NHS budget. And there are other reasons not to trust them on NHS spending:

• A 35 per cent state is not compatible with an NHS as we know it.

• Even their existing plans are unfunded.

1930s plans irreconcilable with Tory pledges: implying £10 billion of cuts from the NHS As we have shown, the Tories’ plans involve cutting £70 billion from day-to-day spending. If the Tories proceed with these plans, the consequences for unprotected spending areas would so extreme as to mean that the NHS will end up paying the price if George Osborne pursues his extreme planned spending cuts. The closest historical equivalent to resource spending in the national accounts is government consumption. On this metric, we can assess past consolidations as a share of GDP throughout OECD countries.

• In the case of the UK, the Tory plans imply a consolidation of 3.8 percent of

Resource DEL as a share of GDP between 2015-16 and 2019-20. Across the OECD, there have been seven countries which have carried out such a consolidation in history for which we have available health spending data.

• If replicated in the UK, using the average experience of these past consolidations as an example of what might happen, NHS spending would be cut by £10 billion in real terms by 2019-20.

A 35 per cent state and the NHS: international comparisons Alongside evidence of the impact on health spending of significant consolidations, the international evidence shows that states of the size the Tories are aiming for have lower public health provision and increased private health spending:

27    The Tories’ plans would cut public spending to a 35 per cent share of GDP, but analysis of other countries’ health systems with a similar level of public expenditure shows that the Tories want to cut spending on services to levels seen in countries where up to half of their health service is privately funded, which could result in huge cuts to health funding.

• In Mexico, Chile and Korea, where state spending is below 35 per cent, approximately 50 per cent of national healthcare is privately funded. Even in Australia, where state spending is just over 35 per cent, almost one third of healthcare is privately funded. This compares to the current level of 16 per cent in the UK.

• For OECD countries with public spending below 35 per cent of GDP in 2012, the

average for health spending funded by public sources was just 55 per cent. If the UK were to fall to having public health spending at 55 per cent of health spending rather than 84 per cent, this would represent a huge reduction across government funding sources.xxxvii

International evidence also shows that states of the size the Tories are aiming for have increased charging within their healthcare systems. ‘Out of pocket expenditure’ is the healthcare for which people are charged, whether publicly or privately provided. WHO data shows that each OECD country with total government expenditure at 35 per cent share of GDP or below (2012 figures) has greater charging as a share of overall national health spending than in the UK.

• The UK has government expenditure at over 40 per cent of GDP and out-of-pocket expenditure at 10 per cent of total expenditure on health. Switzerland has government expenditure at 33 per cent of GDP and out-of-pocket expenditure at 28 per cent of total expenditure on health. Mexico has government expenditure at 27 per cent of GDP and out-of-pocket expenditure accounts for almost half of total expenditure on health. xxxviii

• All countries with public spending levels at 35 per cent or less as a share of GDP

have greater out-of-pocket expenditure per household than the OECD average.xxxix

This underlines the danger of the Tories’ spending plans, which would take public spending to 35 per cent of GDP, highlighting how such deep cuts will make the NHS unrecognisable. Unfunded Tory claims In the Autumn Statement, George Osborne claimed to be spending an additional £2 billion on the NHS.

“And because of careful management, we can afford to put part of that underspend money into our National Health Service to cope with the pressures it faces. £2 billion every year to the frontline of the NHS.” George Osborne, Autumn Statement, 2nd December 2014, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chancellor-george-osbornes-autumn-statement-2014-speech

28    But of the additional £2 billion pledged by George Osborne in the Autumn Statement, £750 million is from the existing Department of Health budget for 2015/16.

“Speaking on the Marr show, Osborne confirmed Sunday newspaper reports that he would be putting an extra £2 bilion a year into the NHS, starting from April next year. Government sources subsequently confirmed that £750m of that was coming from internal health department savings – “essentially moving money from [the back office] to the NHS front line” – while the rest would come from underspends in other government departments. The Guardian, 30 November 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/nov/30/george-osborne-billions-extra-nhs-funding

Of the remaining money, this has been allocated from the Government’s Reserve and is for 2015-16 only.

“NHS funding from the Reserve, reflected in 2015-16 spending numbers” Autumn Statement 2014, p.64, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/382327/44695_Accessible.pdf

In future years, therefore, the Tories’ central health funding pledge is unfunded. The Tory choice The Tories now have a choice. They can either admit that their plans would lead to these unprecedented, deeply destructive, and close to impossible to deliver cuts. Or they can admit that it will be impossible to protect the NHS on the basis of their extreme spending plans. A further rise in VAT would reduce the exact scale of cuts, but so drastic are they that this would remain the choice the Tories face.

29    

Conclusion The Tories now have a choice. They can either admit that their 1930s spending plans are so extreme that they could only be delivered by cutting the NHS, or commit to delivering unprecedented, deeply destructive, and close to impossible cuts to other services. The Tories’ spending plans mean £70 billion of cuts. This means cuts that are:

• More extreme than this Parliament: bigger cuts in the next four years than the last five years. The UK is not even half way through the cuts needed to deliver the Tories’ plan.

• The most extreme in post-war history: a bigger fall in spending as a share of GDP than in any four-year period since demobilisation at the end of the Second World War.

• The most extreme internationally: the largest consolidation planned among

advanced economies, according to the IMF. The impact of these plans would be extreme cuts to other services:

• The smallest police force since the late 1970s (the earliest available comparable data).

• The smallest army since Cromwell ruled Britain.

• A third of older people in social care losing their entitlement to it.

The consequences of Tory spending plans for public services are so extreme as to make them almost impossible to achieve. Therefore, in order to deliver George Osborne’s plans for a large overall budget surplus, the risk is that there would be cuts to currently-protected areas including the NHS, and tax rises, for example another rise in VAT.

• Given the total cuts to spending in the next Parliament are even deeper than those in this Parliament, the Tories could repeat the 2.5 per cent rise in VAT made in 2010.

• OECD countries which have undertaken consolidations on the scale planned by the Tories have seen a resultant reduction in health spending as a share of GDP which, if applied to health spending in the UK, would mean a real terms cut to the NHS of £10 billion over the next Parliament.

The Tories must now make a choice. They must either commit to these cuts, or admit that they plan to cut the NHS and raise VAT.

30    Notes                                                                                                                          i Office for National Statistics, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings 2014 ii Institute for Fiscal Studies, The Effect of the Coalition’s Tax and Benefit Changes on Household Incomes and Work Incentives, January 2015, p.9 iii House of Commons Library analysis iv Office for National Statistics, International Comparisons of Productivity - Final Estimates, 2013, 20 February 2015 v IMF, World Economic Outlook database vi OECD Stat, National Accounts vii Office for Budget Responsibility, Economic and Fiscal Outlook, December 2014, Table 1.2 viii Office for Budget Responsibility, Economic and Fiscal Outlook, December 2014, p.20 ix Office for Budget Responsibility, Economic and Fiscal Outlook, December 2014, p.118-119 x Institute for Fiscal Studies, Benefit Spending and Reforms: The Coalition Government’s Record, January 2015, p.1 xi House of Commons Library analysis of Department for Work and Pensions, Benefit expenditure and caseload tables 2014 xii Department for Work and Pensions, press release, 1 November 2011, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/iain-duncan-smith-sets-out-next-steps-for-moving-claimants-onto-universal-credit xiii Department for Work and Pensions, Universal Credit statistics, 18 February 2015, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/404207/universal-credit-statistical-first-release-feb-15.pdf xiv Department for Work and Pensions, Stat Xplore, January 2015 xv House of Commons Library analysis of Department for Work and Pensions, Benefit expenditure and caseload tables 2014 xvi OBR, Economic and Fiscal Outlook, December 2014, Chart 4.8 xvii Cingano, F. (2014), “Trends in Income Inequality and its Impact on Economic Growth”, OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers, No. 163, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/5jxrjncwxv6j-en xviii OECD Society at a Glance, 2014 xix David Cameron, Speech to Conservative Party conference, 1 October, 2014 - http://press.conservatives.com/post/98882674910/david-cameron-speech-to-conservative-party xx All figures are in real terms, in 2019-20 prices xxi Office for Budget Responsibility, Economic and Fiscal Outlook, December 2014, Table 4.22 xxii Office for Budget Responsibility, Economic and Fiscal Outlook, December 2014, Table 4.22, p.139 xxiii The IFS set out that planned departmental spending on a resource basis will cumulatively fall by 17.3%. The Autumn Statement document sets out that resource departmental spending in 2015-16 will be £316.8 billion. A 17.3 per cent real cut would mean a reduction of around £59 billion in 2019-20 prices. xxiv The tax gap between taxes owned and taxes paid – the tax gap – has gone up under David Cameron, to £34 billion in 2012-13. HM Revenue and Customs, ‘Measuring tax gaps 2014 edition: tax gap estimates for 2012-13’ (Page 8, figure 1.1), 16 October, 2014 - https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/364009/4382_Measuring_Tax_Gaps_2014_IW_v4B_accessible_20141014.pdf Tax collected by the Government’s anti-avoidance measures against companies is going to be 90 per cent lower than those introduced by Labour. Financial Times, 4 February, 2015 xxv Institute for Fiscal Studies, Green Budget 2015, February 2015, p.29

31                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             xxvi Liam Fox, Speech to Conservative Party Conference, 2 October 2007 xxvii Liam Fox, The Daily Telegraph, 6 December 2008 xxviii  Ministry of Defence, UK Armed Forces Annual Personnel Report 1 April 2014 https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/312539/uk_af_annual_personnel_report_2014.pdf  xxix  BBC News Magazine, The time when the British army was really stretched, 23 July 2011 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14218909  xxx  House of Commons Library, Defence personnel statistics, September 2014 http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/briefing-papers/SN02183/defence-personnel-statistics  xxxi  Home  Office  statistics,  Police  Service  Strength  England  and  Wales      xxxii House  of  Commons  Library,  Police  service  strength,  25  July  2013  http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/research/briefing-­‐papers/SN00634/police-­‐service-­‐strength    xxxiii  House of Commons Library note  xxxiv  House of Commons Library note  xxxv  Community Care Statistics, Social Services Activity, England - 2013-14, Final release, December 09, 2014, Annex J: Tables and Charts, Table 3: Packages of care http://www.hscic.gov.uk/catalogue/PUB16133/comm-care-stat-act-eng-2013-14-fin-anxj.xls  xxxvi  Hansard,  written  answer,  5  July  2010,  Column  99W,  http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201011/cmhansrd/cm100705/text/100705w0004.htm#10070542000230      xxxvii Figures taken from OECD Health Statistics http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=HEALTH_STAT xxxviii Figures taken from WHO Global Health Expenditure Database, 2012 xxxix Source: Health at a Glance 2013, OECD Indicators, http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/Health-at-a-Glance-2013.pdf              Printed and promoted by Iain McNicol, General Secretary, the Labour Party, on behalf of the Labour Party, both at One Brewer’s Green, London SW1H 0RH.