What Government expenditure would you cut do you think?

[Wafflefudge]

Having seen quite a few posts recently which seem to be focused on disability spending being unaffordable and needing to be cut it has prompted me to think about what could actually be cut without causing issues/ knock ons that would be more costly long term.
I think perhaps for people who aren't disabled or with disabled children they see this as an easy cut. But we can of course all think of cuts that wouldn't directly or immediately affect us.
I personally dont think any cuts are particularly easy or straightforward though.
Off the top of my head I'd maybe cut libraries as they've put such short hours in place that they are barely useable anyway. Or perhaps maximise making money from them. But recognise this would be a drop in the ocean of public expenditure.
Id be interested in others opinions on where cuts might work. I'm sure answers will vary considerably depending on personal circumstances

This! MPs salaries getting a good review and their expenses would be the same as other civil servants (as a CS, I can tell you you won’t be claiming back Mayfair restaurant dinners!). And charging if you miss an NHS appt (no show, not if you cancel with a vomiting bug), billing for fixing botched turkey plastic surgery. All that would raise a little bit.

What?
Being fed properly is part of your care when in hospital. It is vital for healing and recovery. Plus, how do you square it with people who are in hospital with eating disorders?
Next you will be saying they should pay for medication and dressings too.

Universal free school meals for reception and key stage 1 children. Limit it to those who are entitled to free meals. My son earns £150k, doesn't need his kids to have free meals!

I think all benefits that prevent people from working or earning more need to be looked at.
We have staff members who actively don’t want to earn over a certain amount because they will then lose certain benefits. This seems mad that we would happily pay more (out of private earnings) but instead they take taxpayers money.
Every single one of our staff, earning from 24K to 42k has mentioned this.

Yes i do and if the pension performed so well that i exceeded 50k p.a pension, i'd pay 40% income tax and if it did really good and i got 125k p.a, i'd pay 45%.

Sunak and many others pay just 20% because thats the rules the wealthy have put in place for themselves via CGT, its got nothing to do with treaties.

Same thing with ISA's a product sold as a means for the average saver to avoid tax on modest gains, hi jacked by the wealthy who now use it to ISA wrap their investments over time to avoid any tax on gains.

ISA holdings should be limited.

We need to review the entire benefit / SEN assistance and ascertain the support people need and how best to deliver it that will enable people to work and to enable people to live with dignity and be part of society

The more people feel part of society the less they break the rules and the more they give

One huge expenditure for Govt is housing benefit, often paid to BTL landlords who charge extortionate rents.

Even when LLs don't have tenants on HB, the rents mean many tenants are stuck in a situation where they can never save for a house, even though the rent charged, exceeds a mortgage.

LLs used the raise in interest rates to increase rents but now they are falling, are they reducing rents?

So to avoid all of this, we need to build more council housing and then taper down the number of properties these greedy LLs can own, eventually limiting ownership to 1 perhaps 2 properties.

I wonder how many calling for things like "Make patients pay for their meals" are also BTL's exploiting the less well off?

I'd also employ a joined up thinking approach to funding education/nhs healthcare and social care.
Elderly patients end up bed blocking in hospital as there are no beds available in community care. Increase funding in social care and the nhs bed becomes free for someone who needs more intensive intervention.
Increase funding for schools so they can provide pupil help as needed for SEN children - so children and young people aren't on long waiting lists to receive an asc/adhd diagnosis before receiving any extra help from schools.
Increase funding in the NHS to eliminate the fiasco of families going Right to Choose due to ethically immoral long waiting lists in the NHS for ND diagnosis which cost the NHS at least £2000 for each child diagnosed.
More joined up thinking and funding would improve efficiency no end.
The NHS Trust I work for has been told to save 15% off the budget this year and yet it spends thousands on 'thank you' events, seminars on diversity etc.

There are two things here though.
We need companies to pay enough to staff so that they can survive instead of passing it on as profit to shareholders or owners.
We also need a way for the government to step away from this subsidisation.
However tax credits are very hard to undo once in place. I genuinely would love someone to suggest how it could be done en masse.

Capital Gains Tax may need reform but in theory it’s a good thing to encourage risk taking with people’s own capital. Without that we won’t have start ups, people will only invest in gov bonds which would be a shame and our economy would be stagnant.
There are aspects of CGT I’d reform particularly around the way hedge funds account for their staff’s wages (famous “carry”) but in the great scheme of things, it’s small.
If the gov changes it, they also need to consider the price of money over the time of investment (inflation) and couple in some basic interest rate because if I put £20k into my business in 1990 and now I sell it at £100k having paid the wages of a small number of people and helped society, it seems punitive to tax at 45% without considering both.

The union proposal that all LA get £15 ph would do it for me. I work full time and don’t get much UC as it is.

I think you’d have to also have large scale social housing built to reduce rents too.

Subsidised wrap around care for working parents. It’s really short term thinking to allow parents (often mothers) to be pregnant she’d out the workplace. Barriers to re entry are high. It’s taken me years to get back to professional work after doing school hour cleaning jobs. I had twins and childcare became really unaffordable.

I think that not everyone is suited to care in the community and for certain people they need to be in residential units outside the community

Those who pose a risk to society

Yes, I agree. A problem with building social housing is the knock on effect on house prices but if there were long term, secure tenancies available and no selling, inheriting or subletting of social housing, it would be worth it. Social housing contracts would need robust clauses about crime and anti social behaviour but otherwise there should be no reason why someone couldn’t live in social housing for life instead of renters being on shorthold tenancies.

Societies that invest in women do better. Many inequalities would be balanced by supporting women’s careers (I don’t have DC btw).

If companies paid staff more, then the costs would be passed on in the form of higher prices & hence higher benefits across the board, so its not a win win.

However, could the tax system be used? so companies that do pay higher wages, are taxed on profits differently.

There is clearly something very wrong with how we charge for things in the UK, why has the UK the most expensive childcare in Europe? the most expensive private dental charges? the most expensive Vet bills? the most expensive electricity charges (when standing charge added in)? Yet Ofgem have just increased them by 10%, despite wholesale costs falling.

This all adds to Govt having to subsidise wages via working benefits, meanwhile, the owners of these businesses keep charging more and more and if they think they'll be taxed a bit more, threaten to leave the uk?

Don't offer plastic surgery for cosmetic purposes on the NHS

Charge for fixing botched cosmetic procedures done abroad

Make people having cosmetic surgery take insurance out to pay for repairs before they have the initial procedures done. The NHS shouldn't have to pay for this.

Charge parents of under 18s who cause criminal damage, have access to weapons or get pregnant and ultimately cost the tax payers. The logic is if you come down hard on the parents, the feckless ones might take notice & parent properly. Might not work but worth a try as too many people don't like to parent their precious darlings & we have to suffer the consequences.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crlr7wpw5jeo

Limit the number of houses landlords can own and tax them appropriately

Houses that have lain empty for years with absent owners should be returned to use as social housing. This should be done before building new houses, there's loads of empty houses that can be used as active housing stock.

Foreign property owners who buy multiple houses as investment should pay stamp duty at 50% - 75% of the value of the property. British homeowners are being priced out of the market by foreign investors.

These sorts of policies sound good in theory but can have knock on effects - eg doctors going down to 4 days a week to avoid the £100k cliff edge.

I own several btl houses but I don't rent to people claiming housing benefit. I agree we need to build more social housing but consecutive governments have failed to do so. I've increased rents a small amount over recent years because I want to keep the tenants I have who are good tenants keep my properties nice and pay their rent on time. I don't exploit them any repairs are done in a timely manner, all deposits protected, I've only twice in 20 years not returned full deposit to tenants. My houses are not damp and mouldy. They have new carpets, repaint every 5 years and I even bought 1 tenant a lot of bulbs for the garden because she wanted to make borders around the lawn. Interest rates have not come down for me as I'm on either on a 5 year fix or a 3 year fix on houses. Some of my tenants have been with me for 8 years. I've been to 3 weddings and I'm a Godmother to one DC. I don't think tenants who felt exploited would ask their LL to be Godmother to their DD. I've baby sat for Goddaughter many times so Mum could go out to work during school holidays.

Limit the number of houses landlords can own and tax them appropriately

Speaking to people in the field, the general consensus is that those with more BTL properties tend to be better landlords as they treat it like a job: electric and gas certs, proper deposit schemes, maintenance.. It is the LL with 1-2 who often doesn’t see it as a necessary expense and are doubt it on the cheap.

They are already fully taxed so I don’t know what you mean by that. If you know loopholes, please share.

We need proper tapering of the benefit and tax/nic thresholds. I believe that anyone (at whatever earnings level) should never lose more than 50% of their extra wages for working extra shifts, or taking promotions, etc. At the moment, at certain tax cliff edges, people can end up losing most of their extra earnings, whether earning say £15k or earning, say, £110k. We need an over-riding limit of ALL deductions of 50% to cover tax, nic, loss of UC, and ALL other benefits. The whole point of universal credit was to "make work pay" but it got diluted from it's original brief by the Treasury refusing to fund the required blue print, so we're basically left with a flawed system not much better than the working tax credit system it was planned to replace and improve. Doh!!

Once the benefit system is sorted out to actually incentivise people, at ALL, income levels, then we can start to explore ways of weaning people off benefits and trying to get full time minimum wage levels to be adequate to live a life without benefits.

Foreign Aid.
Unnecessary management in the NHS.

Also, if you're going to cut IVF/Infertility on the NHS for the VERY LIMITED number of people who qualify then make sure your mental health resources are fully funded yeah because you're about to get a large influx of couples trying to access it. Also, let's cut all childcare subsidising/child benefit etc I mean if you can afford to conceive them you can afford to look after them fully can't you?

Lots of landlords aren't declaring their rental income. HMRC have been trying to get on top of it for years and have had some limited success in finding landlords who've sold houses but not declared the capital gains. They could trace some of those by checking land registry registers and stamp duty returns - then trying to trace the capital gains tax returns, or challenging if not. More recently, residential property capital gains tax returns are required to be submitted within two months of sale, so it enables HMRC to check more quickly rather than having to wait sometimes up to nearly two years before a sale would need reporting on a tax return under the old regime. The scale of the problem has been massively reduced.

It's harder for HMRC to trace landlords who aren't selling properties and there's no central register of rented properties, even some councils don't have rented property registers, so all HMRC can do is rely on honesty (funny!) and maybe checking deposit holding registers (but again, dodgy landlords probably aren't using proper letting agents and probably aren't protecting deposits in the schemes).

Maybe the exodus of landlords selling up will bring them to HMRC's attention and maybe HMRC will start not only checking CGT on sale, but also looking back years prior to sale to check landlords were declaring rental income, and wallop them if they weren't. (But even that's not fool proof as landlords can lie and say they (or a family member) was living in a property, hence no rental income. HMRC don't have resources to check everyone has declared rental income. Fair enough once they get a foot in the door, but they can't go round randomly checking if Mrs Miggans at number 42 has a BTL she's not declaring!

@iwishihadknownmore

However, could the tax system be used? so companies that do pay higher wages, are taxed on profits differently.

Well they could reduce the rate of employers NIC which is basically a tax on the higher paid. Not due on part timers on low wages, but then wallopped on all wages above the threshold at quite a high rate.

We have a perfect storm. Firms prefer lots of part timers earning little so neither the employee nor employer pay NIC. Workers like working minimal numbers of hours - just enough to hit the thresholds for WTC or UC. So neither side are particularly keen of breaching the respective thresholds as it costs both more!

It's noteworthy that whilst employEE NIC rates have been reduced over the past year, there has been no increase in employER NIC rates which are still at a high level of 13.8% of wages!

Then, of course, the higher the wage, the employer is also obligated to pay employer pension contributions! Another kick in the teeth and another reason to prefer 2 part timers instead of a full timer!

We really need to get a grip with these barriers!

This and this below

I think all benefits that prevent people from working or earning more need to be looked at.

The false economy approach harms individuals, communities and society as a whole (see the threads about declining towns, cities, and villages).

Having a punitive benefits system and failing health, social care, and other support services, means instead of getting timely, effective, and humane support, people become (more) ill and unable to work due to poverty and stress. Surviving - finding a safe and affordable home and having enough money for food, bills, etc, becomes a full time job.

Many people who only needed short-term help end up needing long-term help instead. Longer period on benefits and in need of more and/or longer term health and social care.

Obviously there's also people who'll never be well enough to work and they deserve to be able to survive with dignity - and anyway punitive benefits system leaves them too in need of more health and social care (bad for them and also expensive for the economy).

In addition to the punitive benefits system, there's the long waits for (good) NHS care, and delays due to misdiagnoses and doctor fobbing off (problem exacerbated by giving people only 5-10 minute appointments and often different doctors every time so no continuity of care), and failing social services, child maintenance system, and other support organisations.

There's examples on various threads on MN.

People left unable to work because of doctor fobbing off or long delays - meaning they're more ill by the time they're treated.

Women fleeing DV being dumped in (crappy and sometimes unsafe) temporary accommodation for ages, sometimes forced to move away from support so ending up isolated when traumatised so becoming long-term ill. Or forced to give up their jobs and go on benefits to go to refuges because there's not enough social housing available.

High earning absent parents not paying CMS, leaving the RP on benefits.

A supportive benefits system, plus timely access to well-funded and effective support services would help individuals and save money longer term.