Author: Martin Wheatcroft

The #ICAEWchartoftheweek this time is on the subject of the EU’s 2019 budget of €148bn. This is in the order of £130bn at current exchange rates, equivalent to €24 per month for each of the 514m people in the EU. 

Of this, €10bn is for EU institutions, with €25bn to be incurred on its main programmes. The big numbers are €57bn for agriculture and rural communities, and €47bn for economic development. A further €9bn is planned in international aid outside the EU.

Not shown in the chart is an increase in future commitments of €18bn – amounts authorised but not yet paid out, such as multi-year research or development grants.

The UK’s share for 2019 is £15bn, but with £6bn expected to come back, the net cost should be £9bn (£11 per person per month), just over 1% of planned UK government spending in 2019-20 of £842bn.

What will happen if the UK’s agreed transition period contributions of £16bn in 2019 and 2020 and post-transition payments of £21bn are not paid in full? Although the UK is expected to prepay around £3bn before the end of March (not included in the £16bn), that will only last so long if it leaves without a deal.

One certainty is that the finance team at the European Commission will need a full range of scenario planning skills to deal with all the possibilities.

The news of the proposed appointment of Gareth Davies to be the new Comptroller & Auditor General for the UK prompted us to look at the National Audit Office website. There we saw one of its current highlights – a fascinating set of data visualisations derived from a major report published last year on the financial sustainability of local authorities in England.

This has inspired this week’s ICAEW #chartoftheweek, which illustrates just how significantly local government spending has been cut in recent years. Annual net expenditure by English local authorities has fallen by £7.0bn or 16% from £43.7bn in 2010-11 (in 2016-17 prices) to £36.7bn in 2016-17.

Spending on planning and development is less than half what it was, while spending on housing support has almost halved. Budgets for transport (highways and public transport) and culture (including libraries, open spaces, sport and tourism) have been cut by over a third, while spending on waste collection, environmental regulation and administration have also been cut. While spending on adult social care is ‘only’ down by 6%, this conceal a much more dramatic cutback in services given the significant growth in the number of older people needing care. Only children’s social care has increased by more than inflation, and then only slightly.

With reports that more and more local authorities are struggling financially, there are many questions to ask about this often neglected area of the public finances.

We look forward to hearing what areas Gareth Davies will be exploring in his tenure. We hope that he will build on the legacy of the current C&AG Sir Amyas Morse to drive improvements in the public finances on behalf of the citizens of the UK.

To find out more, visit the NAO website for more data visualisations on the financial sustainability of English local government – https://www.nao.org.uk/highlights/financial-sustainability-of-local-authorities-2018-visualisation/.

To comment on this, visit ICAEW Talk Accountancy blog at https://ion.icaew.com/talkaccountancy/b/weblog/posts/chartoftheweek062

The first ICAEW #chartoftheweek for 2019 is on the subject of the global economy, with GDP forecast to add up to £69tn in 2019 based on data provided by the IMF.

The UK is expected to generate £2.2tn in economic activity in 2019, just over 3% of the world total. This reflects the UK’s position as a relatively rich country given that its 67m people make up less than 1% of the global population of 7.6bn.

Sterling weakness means that the UK is expected to be only the seventh largest economy in 2019, behind the US (£17.7tn), China (£11.3tn), Japan (£4.1tn), Germany (£3.2tn), India (£2.4tn) and France (£2.2tn). However, it should still be significantly ahead of Italy (£1.7tn), Brazil (£1.5tn), South Korea (£1.3tn), Canada (£1.3tn), Russia (£1.2tn), Spain (£1.1tn), Australia (£1.1tn) and Mexico (£1.0tn).

With Brexit scheduled for the end of Q1 and the potential for escalation in the US’s trade wars with China, Japan and the EU, is a world of strong economies possible in 2019? The only certainty is uncertainty.

However, despite the potentially stormy economic conditions ahead, we remain optimistic for the future. Poverty continues to fall around the world, and new innovations continue to improve the lives of billions of people.

And with that more cheery note, we wish you all the best for the coming year.

Our final #ICAEW #chartoftheweek for 2018 is on the subject of Santa plc, the UK subsidiary of Santa Claus, Inc (“Santa”).

As many of you will know, Santa is one of the world’s largest gift delivery firms with a rather magical business model. After several hundred years of never recording a loss (admittedly never a profit either), Santa has built up one of the highest levels of goodwill that we are aware of, with a consistent track record of growing revenues.

A shining star of the elf-sector of the economy.

As our chart illustrates, Santa is expected to deliver presents worth £13.2bn in 2018, with an average value of around £475 dropped down each chimney. Around 20% of these will have been purchased online, up from around 6% a decade ago as Santa’s cloud-based modernisation programme continues to drive market dynamics.

However, markets and high street stores continue to be the main acquisition pipeline for inventories in the lead up to Christmas, with narrow delivery timescales continuing to be a major operational challenge for Rudolph and the rest of the logistics team.

I do hope that you will have a wonderful break and a prosperous 2019. 

With the festive season upon us and despite tales of High Street gloom, our chart this week is about the £381bn that consumers in England, Wales and Scotland are expected to spend in 2018 on the high street and online. A weekly average of £7.3bn via the multiplicity of payment routes that are possible.

As our chart illustrates, the pattern of spending through the year is significantly skewed to the holiday season, with retail sales excluding fuel in the five weeks ending in December expected to reach almost £48bn. This is a massive £11.1bn higher than if consumer spending was spread evenly through the year.

It is important to understand that the chart is based on an extrapolation from last year’s pattern and is not a forecast. If consumers choose to tighten their belts this year then sales could come in substantially below this level. Such a scenario would add to the woes of a number of retailers, many of whom generate most of their profits in the weeks running up to the end of the year.

So if you are out looking for that last minute present for someone special, just remember that this is a great opportunity to make your retailer happy too!

Yesterday’s Scottish Budget was slightly overshadowed by events in Westminster, but if you live north of the border the £42.5bn that the Scottish government plans to spend next year will possibly be of more interest.

As our #ICAEWchartoftheweek shows, the largest elements of the budget are £14.3bn for health and £11.9bn for local government, followed by a total of £11.8bn spending on education, transport, justice and other, and £4.5bn on NHS and teacher pensions.

£15.3bn, or just over a third of the total, is funded by devolved taxes – with £11.7bn coming from income tax. The remainder is the block grant of £19.9bn, a share of national insurance and other UK-wide taxes of £2.3bn, £4.5bn in funding for NHS and teacher pensions, plus borrowing of £0.5bn for capital projects.

The big news was the decision to maintain the higher rate threshold at £43,430, diverging from £50,000 in other parts of the UK. A penny less of income tax on earnings up to £14,549 and a penny more on all earnings over £24,944, means that there are now 12 tax bands for employment income, compared with 9 south of the border.

This is partly because Holyrood doesn’t control national insurance in the way that it does income tax, creating extra bands where the thresholds do not line up.

The constitutional crisis of the last few days has raised the (theoretical) prospect of the Attorney General being imprisoned in the Tower of London for contempt of Parliament, which made us decide to look at crime and punishment.

Our chart of the week looks at how spending on public order and safety – i.e. on the police, courts, prisons and fire services – has changed over the last twenty years.

In cash terms spending has increased by 77% from £18bn in 1998-99 to £32bn in 2017-18, but of course this doesn’t take account of inflation, population increases or economic growth.

We have consequently adjusted for changes in GDP to make the numbers more comparable. On this basis, the 1.8% of GDP spent on public order in 1998-99 would have been £37bn if kept constant as a share of GDP.

The share of national income spent on public order grew by 23% between 1998-99 and 2009-10, before declining by 30% to 2017-18. Overall a drop of 15% from two decades ago.

We await the Spending Review to find out how much will be spent in future however we can only hope that this will start to bring crime levels back down again; an outcome that will no doubt be pleasing to the Attorney General as he stares across the yard at the White Tower.

We thought we might look at one of the UK government’s key risk management tools in our chart this week – the UK’s foreign reserves. 

These principally comprise financial investments in the sovereign debt of other countries, together with foreign central bank deposits, investments in the IMF, gold holdings, and foreign currency loans and deposits with UK and international banks. 

As the chart shows, the UK government’s gross foreign reserves have increased from $52bn (£31bn) ten years ago to $164bn (£129bn), a 316% increase over the last decade. This is not the full story, as the government has a policy of hedging to protect against a proportion of its exposure to currency and interest rate movements. 

As a consequence, derivative and other financial liabilities have also increased, meaning that net reserves have increased at a slower rate – from $24bn (£15bn) to $52bn (£41bn), a 173% increase. This is part of a deliberate strategy by the government to increase its financial firepower and so be better prepared for the next financial crisis, investing £6bn last year for example. 

As the UK sails into potentially choppy economic waters over the next few years, this may prove to be quite important.

To join the conservation visit https://ion.icaew.com/talkaccountancy/b/weblog/posts/icaew-chart-of-the-week-542059546.