David Phillips

Plans for a Scottish ‘National Care Service’ would centralise over £4 billion of spending and may not lead to more consistent services.

Using property prices from Q1 2022, this note partially updates analysis of council tax reform in Wales originally published in 2020.

8% cuts to many service areas and hidden tax rises relative to the rest of the UK

In its upcoming Resource Spending Review, the Scottish Government will have to choose between spending cuts, tax rises, or hoping for extra UK government funding.

Last month the government finally announced how its replacement for EU regional development funding – the Shared Prosperity Fund – will be allocated across the country.

It is disappointing that the UK government has ‘taken back control’ only to stick to an arbitrary, poorly designed, out-of-date funding allocation mechanism.

The allocation of public spending is one the most direct levers for ‘levelling up’ health, wealth and well-being. But is policy aligned with the government’s stated aims?

At this event, IFS researchers put the Levelling Up White Paper in context by outlining the current pattern of taxes and public spending around the country and presenting new work that looks at geographic inequalities in labour market outcomes.

In this presentation at the Local Government Association's Annual Local Government Finance Conference (2022), IFS researchers explained the economic and fiscal outlook, looked at how councils' finances have fared during the pandemic, and the funding outlook and issues facing the sector in the next few years.