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

All good in theory but for that to happen, invest needs to be made in healthcare, staff, funding for charities, funding HMRC and Child support agencies etc etc

Not cheap, so how would you pay for these investments.

I own several btl houses but I don't rent to people claiming housing benefit.

This is one of the major problems. It's also now illegal to refuse to let property to tenants on benefits. It was found to be sex and disability discrimination - which of course it is.

Obviously though this poster won't know if some of her/his tenants are on benefits. They might get made redundant or their employer cuts their hours necessitating a claim for UC to top-up wages, or become too ill to work, mid-tenancy.

Landlords like this poster cost the economy massively. Homeless people (vulnerable disabled people, and people in work but on lower wages doing jobs that are important but not highly paid) are put in crappy but very expensive temporary accommodation.

That makes those people unwell (or if already ill, more unwell) so less able to work. It costs society billions.

Billions on the housing costs because the landlords (often slumlords) who own the temporary accommodation charge councils above market rent, and also billions in sickness benefits, health and social care, and lost income tax revenue.

All good in theory but for that to happen, invest needs to be made in healthcare, staff, funding for charities, funding HMRC and Child support agencies etc etc. Not cheap, so how would you pay for these investments.

There's that saying "buy cheap, pay twice". That's kind of what the false economy approach is.

It also won't be as costly as people might think. Massive amounts of money is spent on housing and public services. It's just misspent - and then costs society and taxpayers more.

Housing for example. Billions is spent just on temporary accommodation. Add in the many millions (probably billions) on housing benefits for private rentals, and it's cheaper to fund more council housing.

More social rentals would also reduce demand for and cost of health and social care. Private renting is more harmful for health than smoking. I assume short-term when young and maybe not yet settled in an area, it's fine, but doing it long-term and/or when older, vulnerable, or a family, is when it affects health.

Then there's public services - health and social care, DV services, mental health services, etc. Outsourced to private companies or charities who pay senior staff and owners eye watering sums and prioritise spending on PR campaigns and bidding for contracts.

Because of their spending priorities, they often have badly trained and low paid junior frontline staff (who often need benefits top-up). And the services provided are done on the cheap and substandard.

So this costs more money - because the people needing support end up in more need of help and for longer periods of time, and the frontline staff need benefits to top-up their wages plus often suffer burnout and end up in need of support services or sickness benefits themselves.

I would cut the following, granted it would be hard for people, but it is what it is.

Cut the social care budget by 20%

Cut Universal Credit by 25%

Cut the NHS Budget by 20% introduce £20 charges for appointments, and initiate a massive restructuring to remove and streamline management and back end staff.

Stop paying MP expenses. RAF Northholt will be a MP center, each MP will be issued a room in barracks, access to office space, and the canteen.

Freeze the state pension for 5 years.

Freeze the MOD budget, force the military to build up stocks of cheaper more efficient weapons.

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.

Lots of smaller businesses can't afford to pay higher wages and would go bust if they did - meaning more people unemployed and needing benefits, so costing the economy more.

The way to address the issue is to lower the cost of living. Housing is perhaps the biggest thing, but also childcare and sorting out the CMS (too many non RPs including high earners, get away without paying).

This poster below is right.

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

With this
A problem with building social housing is the knock on effect on house prices
I don't think that would be a massive problem. Lots of people would still want to buy because it gives more options over where to live and type of housing, and also equity for later life. But yes to if there were long term, secure tenancies available and no selling, inheriting or subletting of social housing, it would be worth it Very true. Better for individuals, but also better for society - and for the economy.

@Backwoods57

What an awful attitude to the less affluent

plus the generous subsidised meals, and the £3,400 they get for their fuel bills!

Freeze the state pension? What have you got against pensioners?

Tbf to @Backwoods57 we could cut UC, NHS, and social care spending - by better managing of social care, and reducing need.

Although freezing the state pension? No definitely not. The UK already has one of the lowest pensions in the western world.

And charging for healthcare appointments. I actually favour a healthcare system similar to France. That does involve a form of health insurance - but the state ensures access for all including the poorest and most vulnerable (disabled, people looking for work, etc). France has one of the best healthcare systems in the world with good (and timely) access and good outcomes.

Re cutting UC and social care budget. This is achieved by:

• Ending outsourcing to private companies and charities - where spending priorities are focused on senior staff salaries and on bidding for contracts, instead of having well trained frontline staff providing timely and effective support.

• Better healthcare system (the French model is good). This reduces long-term ill health, so saving both on healthcare and on benefits.

• More social housing. Fewer people would need top-up UC to pay high private rents. And, the British Medical Journal published a study that found private renting is more harmful to health than smoking - so with more social housing there'd be less need for (long-term) sickness benefits and social care.

• Improved child maintenance system. Too many non resident parents, including high earners, aren't paying up.

• Job, education, and training opportunities. Including addressing employer age, disability, and career gap discrimination.

The best responses IMO so far is to kill off the black economy so that all services and goods go through the tax system. That’s on us folks! Not popular though - we turn a blind eye as we pay cash or transfer into the personal account of our mobile hairdresser, childminder or plumber.

If you cut UC, what exactly will people live on? It's £393 per month for a single person

I don't disagree but you cannot move one pot of money from say housing benefit to council house building, initially you have to fund both.

Same with NHS reform, the NHS still has to function 24/7/364

100% on out sourced services but again, whilst staff are being transferred to new NHS or Council employment, the service still has to be maintained.

Often hear about NHS IT, yes its old and needs upgrading but the old IT has to work in parallel with any new system and the new system has to be backward compatible, the NHS cannot do a switch over on BH weekend like a bank or supermarket can.
This will be a huge cost and initially wont benefit patient care one bit.

So reform has to happen gradually and that means higher taxes or higher borrowing to pay for it all.

So what happens to military personnel in need of block rooms?
There is and has been an ongoing shortage of block rooms.

Again with office space, how is that feasible. Real estate, especially anything with enough "taps" for computer terminals etc are already stretched, limited and stripped to the bone.

Agree on the canteen, if mps saw the state of this new pay as you starve options rolled out from May this year, that could fix a big issue.

Mod budget freeze is not sustainable. The budget isn't just for weapons but for infrastructure across the mod estate. Much of which are in need of fixes/refurbs and updating. The amount of places falling into disrepair is insane.

Cheap and "efficient" don't go hand in hand. If you want cheap then you are looking at unguided munitions that cause unnecessary collateral damage.
The reason certain munitions end up costly is due to the technology needed to make them accurate: guidance systems, counter-measures, counter counter-measures, systems that reduce collateral damage etc.
At the moment we aren't dropping that many.

Re MP salaries and expenses, not to mention the Northolt lodging idea (!), I think they should be paid MORE to encourage strong people who have had careers before and can bring real skills to the job. £70K is not a king’s ransom and expenses are for receipted things like bills and rent.

Instead we get individuals who are very rich and want the status, either through inheritance or - less likely - prior careers as bankers, barristers and business owners, or you get people for whom £70k represents a jump in their circumstances.

It's not 70k. It's £91,346+expenses.

1. Ukraine aid
2. Overseas aid
3. Climate aid for Africa
4. Asylum seekers aid - people don’t get benefits, education or healthcare unless they were born here or have lived here 18 years
5. Smart motorways building was stopped except schemes already started. Stop all the ones already started - turn lane 1 back into the hard shoulder by painting a continuous white line. No point throwing good money after bad.
6. Cancel HS2 - sunk costs are irrelevant to investment decisions going forward
7. Reinstate the last NI reduction by the Conservatives and merge NI with income tax
8. Israel aid (if any)
9. Align capital gains tax with income tax (including NI as per 7.)
10. Nationalise the PO, water, gas and electricity
11. Nationalise the NHS and abolish the internal market
12. Nationalise social care
13. Nationalise rail and buses - make them free
14. Build halls of residences for MPs somewhere near Westminster and abolish the support they get for buying a second home in London. Ditto abolish the subsidised restaurants and bars in Houses of Parliament. Tie their pay rises to those for the public sector

Yes stop aid to Ukraine to save £3billion only to spend £300 billion to defend Poland or the Baltic states and spend another £100 billion looking after the 10s of millions of Ukrainians who will pour into Western Europe.

The bill to nationalise your long list of industries will cost many times more than any savings you've list earlier, even if some would be better off in the public sector.

The bill to nationalise your long list of industries will cost many times more than any savings you've list earlier, even if some would be better off in the public sector.

As with water for instance, why should taxpayers fund dividends to overseas investors, while the infrastructure falls apart - because those investors know the government will have to pick up the pieces eventually. Could be sooner rather than later in the case of Thames Water!

If we are serious about climate change; then far more people and freight should be going by rail and not on the roads! It was madness to sell off all the goods yards (our local one is now a car park), when we need them now!

I totally agree. One of our staff earns around 42k and we have to work with her to give her bonuses and pay rises because she’s doing such a good job - but she only wants a pay rise that’s big enough to offset the loss in various payments she gets, so we are holding back for the time being and will give her a bigger bonus and pay rise at a later date (all at her request).

I don’t know how this gets undone to be fair - I know people on a lower wage need top ups but it seems crazy that we can’t pay more as it means she ends up getting less.

At the other end we have a staff member who also has caring responsibilities and although we’d like him to do more hours (and he would like them) he loses various benefits by doing this too. We’re totally flexible with his hours but we would pay him a lot more if he wanted it. He cares for his mum and sometimes she’s fine and other times needs a lot of care so we flexibly allow him to work to cater for this but he’s so nervous of working too much in case he loses payments.

And we are just one small business!

100% but if shareholders don't get returns they will sell/stop investing, then where does the money come for improvements? & there seems to be no means of recouping returns already paid out.

If we allowed water companies to go bust and then bought them for £1, then market confidence in working with Govt would vanish overnight, however i would still do with water, some privatisations, where there is genuine choice is reasonable but not water.

The damage done by privatisation has been huge, the payment of dividends to both water and rail investors whilst the public subsidise both is almost criminal in nature but we voted for this to continue for decade after decade.

The damage done by privatisation has been huge, the payment of dividends to both water and rail investors whilst the public subsidise both is almost criminal in nature but we voted for this to continue for decade after decade.

We didn’t vote Conservative in any of their three elections; but where we live a donkey with a blue rosette would have won! Iirc, the Conservatives had less than a majority vote in their last election. While Labour didn’t have a majority either, that’s a consequence of FPTP, which we don’t support. People vote for an MP, who then has to comply with the party whip, regardless of their personal opinions on an issue. (Although in our case, our MP was desperate to get well in with the leaders of his party anyway)

The damage done by privatisation has been huge, the payment of dividends to both water and rail investors whilst the public subsidise both is almost criminal in nature but we voted for this to continue for decade after decade.

It's not the theory, it was the implementation with not enough controls and safeguards.

There's no way the government could have paid the tens of billions needed for all the new trains, all the infrastructure re power, water, broadband, etc. It's just another foul up like PFI was for the health service. All good in theory to get investors stumping up the cash, but like I say, not the correct safeguards and controls to prevent rampant profiteering and crap services, and in the case of PFI, people signing contracts who hadn't a clue what they were signing. And of course, not putting controls/rules in force to prevent foreign investors taking over.

We could have done it all differently, with private investors stumping up the cash, like with BT, British Gas, etc ("don't tell Sid" etc!), but ultimately, without controls/limits as to foreign investors buying up, we've lost control as all the "don't tell sid" investors just sold up rather than building up their own portfolios as was the intention.

Because private industry almost always provides services at lower cost more efficiently than the government. Thus it’s better value for money

Done correctly, with proper checks and balances, then yes.

I've had exceptional service from Specsavers for hearing aids. Paid for by the NHS, service delivered by Specsavers. That's how it should be. As you say, far more efficient. (I shudder when I remember the sheer faff and fiasco of getting them via the local hospital previously - it was classic "how not to do things efficiently").

We need more of that. And Less of the way water has been privatised. It's ALL about getting the contract negotiation right in the first place and then having proper controls and management of the contracts afterwards, with safeguards in place, i.e. clauses in the contract to take back control if the private provider beggars it up or fails to meet key performance indicators.

From experience, quite a few missed hospital appts. are down to chaotic/inefficient NHS admin. Letters sent to addresses left long ago, despite the record having been updated, a patient sent to the wrong centre for treatment, letters repeatedly sent ONLY to someone with dementia, when admin have been told repeatedly that the person will never remember, and will very likely hide the letter or bin it.

Those are just 3 I know of personally.