Where is the money going?!

[WilderHawthorn]

All we seem to hear at the moment is that spending needs to be cut and tax increased. I’m a middle earner (not higher rate tax) and don’t mind paying my fair share. But where is the money actually going?

welfare is being cut
education is on its knees
the NHS is a shambles
roads are atrocious
infrastructure generally seems poor
public transport is useless
social services are appallingly overstretched
the £ is at a terrible rate internationally
food inflation is huge

I get that illegal migrants and adult social care are huge costs, but where is the rest of it truly going? I cannot fathom the situation we’re in, is it truly to service the economic debt from Covid?

For the bulk, an ever increasing expectation of standards and demand on public services.

(SEN make up a much larger % of school pupils than every have in history, % of people relying entirely on benefits for their income, people living longer in very poor health are a big draw on both health and social care services, increasing costs of services as technology progresses).

Those costs generally are spent on a portion of the population who pay relatively little in terms of tax, and understandably those services are prioritised for public spending. So those who pay larger amounts of tax see that tax take rise, but no positive impact on the public services they use.

All that and people still pop out babies for tax payers to pay for.

It's a massively ageing population that means increasing pension requirements and healthcare needs in people who wouldn't have lived even 15 to 20 years ago.

Agree with Brexit making us poorer. COVID made the whole world poorer.

But immigration and "benefits" I'm just not convinced about. Unless of course you include pensions as a benefit, which doesn't usually seem to be the case on these threads.

I also think that we have become poorer in the years since Thatcher's massive privatisation. Government owns nothing. Also getting rid of gold reserves.

Everyone pays some sort of tax ie VAT on goods they buy.
I totally agree with way too much is spent on our 'guests' even if that makes me upopular. I'm not in it for dumbing down truth.

The UK is having to pay for the world's social care needs, as well as your own.

But immigration and "benefits" I'm just not convinced about.

The 'Boris wave' etc. has tipped immigration from a net benefit to a net loss for the UK. Close to minimum wage workers are bringing their elderly parents, young children and disabled relatives, and taking far more out than they or their ancestors have put in.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/06/migrant-pensioners-home-office-asylum-claims/

But surely all other countries had covid expenses as well

The demands are in reading everywhere. And less people are paying in OP.

So services are decreasing.

Around a quarter (25%) goes on social security and welfare, mostly pensions (pensioners receive about 55% of the total welfare bill).

This is one reason why many economists believe we should get rid of the triple lock for pensions. According to the OBR, solely due to the triple lock we are now spending £12bn more per year on pensions than we would have been had we just uprated pensions to keep pace with average earnings every year since 2011.

Also, spending on the state pension will rise by around £80 billion in today’s terms by the 2070s, and over half of this increase is projected to be due to the triple lock. But under a more volatile economic environment the triple lock could cost an extra 1.5% of national income – or £44 billion in 2025–26 terms – on top of this. The only way it will go down is if inflation falls and earnings growth is less volatile in future but I don't think anyone thinks that is very likely over the next 50 years, with climate change starting to truly bite and technological and geopolitical disruption in the meantime.

We should replace this with the "smoothed earnings link" which they use in countries like Australia instead - it will save us billions.

(https://ifs.org.uk/articles/what-are-effects-triple-lock-and-how-could-it-be-reformed)

Strangely enough the defence budget has increased

Brexit's economic impact includes
reduced long-term productivity and trade, with estimates suggesting a long-run hit of about 4% to GDP and a 15% reduction in trade compared to remaining in the EU.
Im guessing you voted for Brexit?

Furlough programmes varied substantially and some countries were much more stingy than others (and therefore had less debt).

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/explainer/coronavirus-how-countries-supported-wages-during-pandemic

The cost of net zero is huge and it's something that I doubt we will ever seen tangible benefits from, either in the UK or globally.

£1.4 billion push for net zero in NHS reported today
108billion by 2050 in UK
Others report almost 5 billion a year
Huge figures - no clue how accurate these are - and projected spending always just seems to rise above what was expected

Given the presumption, I know you've already made your mind up about how I voted regardless of whatever I tell you, so I'm not even going to bother answering.

The thing that irks me about arguments for rejoining the EU is GDP, ie money changing hands. It's almost always about money. Not the fact that we're still subject to laws not of our own making, ie attached bottle caps. It's just so shallow.

Which reminds me about the VAT on private schools that many are celebrating, ie "The rich are paying more and that's a GOOD THING!". That wouldn't be allowed under EU regulations, so by way of being part of the clown show that is the EU means we can't tax the education system anyway. Kind of a shot in the foot there for Remainers.

welfare is being cut

No, it's not.

Quite the opposite, there are rumours that the child element cap will be lifted.

Debt repayments, an aging population.

It's against the ethos of the Labour party to cut anything, they'll blow the spending out. We've already borrowed £92b more than projected, which is twice that of what we borrowed in the mid-2000s, and even back then people said the spending was dangerously out of control.

Bond market strike is needed. Only way to force the government to live within it's means.

Have you seen how France and Germany are doing economically?????
Both riven by strikes over cost of living
France has been described as a "basket case " by the IMF
Spain and Italy have huge pockets of poverty as does France
Our economy was doing ok until Starmer destroyed the economy
retail and leisure have been very badly hit by increase in wage NI and corp tax
We own our own company we have laid off a third of the staff we had at the end of last year (one of whom I hear has had his family home re-possessed)
That is less people working and paying tax
DUH
Well done Mr Starmer and Mrs Reeves

Because we have been borrowing since we were bailed out by the IMF in 1976, in the hope that one day it "will all come good", it hasn't and it won't.

a good example of how difficult for all of us to get our head around astronomical sums of money.

Around £40bn has been spend on HS2 so far - that's the figure since the project began in 2010. In most years the spend has been between £2-3bn.

The amount of money spent on Covid measures is estimated to be around £350bn. Scrapping HS2, or diverting those funds to tackle covid would have made no difference to the economic outcomes of covid.

By far the biggest expenditure in Britain every year is health and social care (approx £200bn) and education is next with just over £100bn. If you want to make savings those are the two obvious areas to look at, but there is no political will to do so.

1976 was the year we had two elections, Harold Wilson who then resigned and then James Callaghan. Not sure which one went to the IMF. But it's clear that out of control public spending is part of the fabric of Labour.

Debt repayments? I don’t know.

I looked at the breakdown of where my tax goes on the HMRC app and the biggest % is for welfare .

surreygirly

Exactly. I'm always surprised when people list Brexit as the cause of our troubles. Having accused the Brexiteers of British exceptionalism they seem unaware that many of the issues we face are global. Most people in the world are facing a cost of living crisis with housing and basic living costs becoming increasingly unaffordable due to rising prices and stagnating wages.

The wealth gap continues to grow whilst governments everywhere blame previous administrations for the problems. People remain convinced that there are differences between left and right and if we just vote for the right party everything will come up roses. The billionaire donor class and ALL of our politicians are laughing all the way to the bank.

To most people, welfare just means benefits. The NHS (health and social care) and the DWP (pensions and benefits) are also part of that spending and they are both overgrown.