To think this budget will finish us off

[BurnoutGP]

I am a GP Partner of over 20 years. I am now senior partner for the last few years. We have seen year on year below inflation funding increase. With an explosion in demand and massive shift of work from secondary care. We have issues wirh recruitment.
Our partner income is shrinking year on year. We are now always overdrawn and this gets worse every month.
We just cannot soak up the MLW and NI without adequate resource uplift.
I think we will be done. I'm so very tired of the constant battle and the demand and anger while working "part time" 60hr weeks.
We will have to hand back our contract. And we wont be the only one. That will leave one surviving practice in my area.
I'm done.

That’s a no then.

@EverythingAllatOnceAllTheTime "Completely incorrect.
Do you check into what Labour tell you, or simply believe it?"

What's incorrect about saying that Labour has inherited a total shit-show from the incompetent, mendacious Conservatives? OBR spelled it out - Brexit has cost the country billions and the country is in deep debt and in need of huge investment just to stay afloat. Over 10% of the population of England is waiting for an NHS appointment - walk down an average street in an average town and that means that in every third house, someone is waiting for treatment. Everyone has a friend, neighbour, or close family member who is on a waiting list.

Hunt had no idea what he was doing as Chancellor - although he knew exactly what he was doing as Health Secretary, on a mission to turn the NHS into a bare-bones organisation while driving those who can pay into the arms of the private healthcare companies. And for people who think that private healthcare is going to save them, this isn't necesssarily so. It is a license to print money. My last encounter with a private provider in the UK was an exercise in getting as much money out of me as possible. £150 for a 20 minute initial consultation, during which the Consultant said I'd need an ultrasound scan - which he couldn't do so I'd need to book an sonography appointment (£150 and a 4 week wait) and then an appointment to go through the scan results (another 4-week wait and another £150 for what could have just been a 5-minute phone call). Each appointment involved an afternoon off work and a 2-hour round trip. At the end of this, he said that he doesn't do the operation that I needed privately (they don't have the equipment - i.e. they've cherry-picked - and I'd have to go onto a 12-month NHS waiting list. [For comparison - I still have follow-up appointments for this issue, but I now live in Europe. I see a consultant once a year who I usually book 14 days in advance, and who does a full check-up, does the ultrasound scan and discusses the results all in one 30-minute appointment, and all "free" as part of my normal State healthcare.]

But you think business don't need profit, so where does the Exchequer then get £100+ billion from?

And you can't claim future investment against this year's tax
If I make £100k profit, and decide that next year I want to buy new plant, I still have to pay the tax on this year's profit, and claim the spend as FA purchases next year against next year's tax

If you're not paying tax on profit set aside for future investment that's evasion

If you think the state of the NHS is all down to the Tories, you should take a look at what Labour has done in Wales, or the SNP in Scotland.

As for cost of private, if you think that a lot you are completely divorced from the real cost of health care. But we don’t have private healthcare in the UK - we have a system where certain procedures/treatments/investigations can be done privately.

Removing the emotion, and returning to the topic.

The PP stated ‘other countries are not in this position financially, that is what people need to be angry about’.

This is patently not accurate.

Net Govt borrowing as a % of GDP.
UK 4.25%

For context
India 7.78%
US 7.63%
Japan 6.09%
France 5.96%

Dont forget, Labour have just committed 9.4 bn to the public sector - 43% of your black hole….

Would you give the source of these figures?

Net government borrowing as a percentage of GDP is well over 90% according to the House of Commons Library.

@EverythingAllatOnceAllTheTime

The US government debt as a percentage of GDP is 122%

India - 81%
Japan - 263%
France - 112%

If we look at it at a macro level, the government spends about £1.2 trillion. The OBR has only ‘found’ £10 billion of the claimed ‘black hole’ , so a little under 1%. That like someone on the UK average income overspending by £20 one month. The problem is, at one level, illusionary.

Our GDP is around £2.8 trillion and, following the budget for growth, growth has been revised down by between 0.2 and 0.3% for the next 5 years. Let’s average that at 0.25%, which on £2.8 trillion is £7 billion. Tax as a % of GDP is around 44% I think, so that’s wiped £3 billion a year for 5 years off the governments income. More in reality because it compounds.

But this budget has also made money more expensive, and reduced the likelihood of interest rates following as quickly. Government debt is also around £2.8 trillion, and with money between 0.25% and 0.5% more expensive that’s another £7 to £14 billion for the treasury to find. I think the OBR is estimating £9billion? Either way, the negative impacts pretty much wipe out the £20/25 billion raised from taxing employment more.

So being a bit more circumspect about spending plans and more agressive on reform and efficiency would seem to be a much more sustainable approach and actually have a chance of delivering growth. Targeting increase in tax on profitable businesses not all also wouldn’t stifle growth quite as much. Being wedded to nationalise things is an expensive folly we can’t afford right now, if ever. Using government money to crowd out private money in energy also seems foolish. We should be incentivising / subsiding future technology not well proven technology.

Good post, but this is worth reiterating. This is the problem with the budget

Government debt is also around £2.8 trillion, and with money between 0.25% and 0.5% more expensive that’s another £7 to £14 billion for the treasury to find. I think the OBR is estimating £9billion? Either way, the negative impacts pretty much wipe out the £20/25 billion raised from taxing employment more.

Also this

Using government money to crowd out private money in energy also seems foolish. We should be incentivising / subsiding future technology not well proven technology.

IMF.

We should be incentivising / subsiding future technology not well proven technology

The government is doing both, although those are plans largely put in place by the previous government.

Please provide the link. The global debt-to-gdp ratio is approaching 100%, made up largely by the largest western economies - according to the IMF October 2024 Fiscal Monitor. Your figures cannot be the correct ones.

www.imf.org/external/datamapper/GGXCNL_G01_GDP_PT@FM/ADVEC/FM_EMG/FM_LIDC

@BurnoutGP is long gone. They've had their vent.

Are you for real?

What a stupid comment.

You can't complain really, OP. Most people voted for this shower of fools.
I thought they were going to fix everything?
Especially "Our" NHS and "our public services" and most importantly help "working people".

Lol.

The Labour party has form for this. I have zero sympathy for anyone who voted for them.

Most people voted for this shower of fools.

Fewer people voted Labour at this election than at the last when the Tories got a large majority. Labour got just 33.7% of the vote on a turnout of only 60% - so only 20% of the electorate actually voted for this ‘shower of fools’.

The Tories did so badly because their vote was split with Reform. Together they and Reform got significantly more votes than Labour (38%). If Reform hadn’t stood and their votes had gone to the conservatives (they might have stayed at home instead) then the Tories would have won a lot more seats.

Here we go.

Reeves has been left with 18 bn less headroom in her spending plans after the OBR made an error in March…

Bloomberg.

When was the error spotted? Has the OBR changed its analysis since budget day?

Edit: after your edit, what does that mean? Is the OBR standing by its existing published budget analysis?

The error stemmed from some March data, but was flagged in a footnote following the budget on Wenesday.

It may explain the bond market volatility in part, but Reeves has less borrowing headroom, in essence.

Thank you.

I have a horrible feeling that a slow-motion car crash is unfolding on the markets. It’s not just indices moving in the wrong direction but doing so with little or no prospect of reverse.

Reeves cannot undo this budget in the way that Truss and Kwarteng did with their mini-budget. Everything’s on the line for Labour here.

That figure shows by how much the debt is changing each year in relation to GDP - so a figure of +X means that the overall debt-to-GDP ratio has increased by X.

The overall debt-to-GDP figures are on a different chart - Fiscal Monitor (October 2024) - Net debt which gives the UK's net debt-to-GDP ratio as 91.63%

Thanks I will look into that - must confess I have been busy today.

Would otherwise appreciate your response to the PP’s assertion in the context of other OECD countries.

Eventually this will come back to bite us. There's no way the UK can make its businesses this uncompetitive and get away with it long term.