This presentation was given on 30 March 2015 at an away day for the Scottish Parliament Finance Committee in preparation for its enquiry on the Smith Commission proposal and Scotland's fiscal framework.
The Conservative Party have claimed that under Labour there would be a £3,028 tax rise for every working household. This new observation explains this number and assesses whether this would actually be the case.
This article, commissioned and published by The Lancet, considers the rising demand and cost pressures for the NHS and how these might be addressed under the parties’ plans for public spending over the next few years.
The current parliament has seen five successive years of fiscal tightening – with taxes being increased and spending cut to bring to UK’s public finances back towards a more sustainable position. Until last week the government’s plan was that this austerity would continue through virtually the whole of the next parliament. However, despite no substantively new information about the outlook for the economy, last week’s Budget saw the government alter its long-term economic thinking – announcing that austerity will end one year earlier than previously planned and leaving the UK with a smaller budget surplus in the medium-term than was planned in December. In the light of the March 2015 Budget, this observation sets out more detail on the currently planned timing and composition of the overall fiscal tightening.
There weren’t too many new policies in this week’s budget but it still set some almighty challenges for the next government, whichever party finds itself in charge.
A new tool launched on the IFS election website today allows you to act as Chancellor and set your own Budget. Complete with data visualisation and infographics, the interactive tool guides you through the challenging tradeoffs involved when deciding how much to tax, how much to spend, and how much to borrow over the next few years.
In this Observation, we assess the empirical evidence on what has happened to health and social services spending in England and Wales since 2010–11. We find that the relative degree of protection offered to these services does differ between the two countries.
The IFS Green Budget 2015 shows that a future government would have to implement much deeper cuts in social security spending than have so far been suggested to find the £12 billion reduction in spending sought by the Conservatives.
The paper investigates the short run responsiveness of National Health Service (NHS) nurses’ labour supply to changes in wages of NHS nurses relative to wages in outside options available to nurses, utilising the panel data aspect of the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings.
Event
4 February 2015 at 10:00<p>Dean's Yard, Westminster, London SW1P 3NZ</p>
The IFS Green Budget 2015 will analyse the issues and challenges facing Chancellor George Osborne as he prepares for his final Budget of this parliament.
