ICAEW chart of the week: OBR long-term fiscal projections

The OBR’s July 2023 fiscal risks and sustainability report indicates that, without higher taxes, public sector net debt as a share of GDP could triple or more over the next 50 years.

Column chart with bars equal to projected public sector net debt / GDP:

2022/23 Baseline projection: 101%
2072/73 Baseline projection: 310%
2072/73 + spending pressures: 385%
2072/73 + interest rate sensitivity: 376%
2072/73 + 21st century shocks: 435%

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) published its latest fiscal risks and sustainability report on 13 July 2023, providing its analysis of the key risks confronting the UK public finances and long-term fiscal projections for the next 50 years.

This is a sobering report, suggesting that public sector net debt as a share of economic activity as measured by GDP could more than triple between March 2023 and March 2073 – and perhaps go even higher in certain circumstances. The OBR concludes that the public finances are on an unsustainable path.

As illustrated by this week’s chart, the OBR’s baseline projection suggests that the ratio of public sector net debt to GDP could rise from 101% of GDP in 2022/23 to 310% of GDP in 2072/73. The OBR also presented three alternate scenarios: the first is based on higher levels of spending, which could result in the ratio reaching 385% of GDP; one involves higher interest rates, where the ratio might reach 376% of GDP; and a further scenario assuming additional economic shocks, where the ratio might hit 435% of GDP.

The projections are based on the government’s current medium-term fiscal plans as set out in the March 2023 Spring Budget, extrapolated into the future based on existing trends. The starting point is the already high level of public debt that has built up over the past 15 years, together with the current government’s plan to cut spending on public services over the next five years.

The OBR has then overlayed its view of economic growth over the next half century and expected changes in patterns of public spending. This reflects a substantial rise in spending on pensions, health and social care as the proportion of the population in retirement rises, among other drivers that include the financial costs and benefits of delivering net zero. Other key assumptions relate to productivity, demographics (births, deaths and net migration), interest rates and inflation.

The one thing the OBR hasn’t been able to do is to include probable but not enacted tax changes in its projections, with increases in public spending assumed to be financed by higher levels of borrowing instead of the tax rises that future governments are in reality going to opt for. 

The projections therefore reflect borrowing that compounds over time to result in some very large headline debt numbers in March 2073, rather than the 1.5% of GDP rise in the tax burden each decade that would, according to the OBR, maintain the debt to GDP ratio at close to its current level.

The fiscal projections calculated by the OBR highlight just how difficult a position the UK’s public finances are in and the major fiscal challenges that will face the incoming government – whoever that may be – after the next general election.

This chart was originally published by ICAEW.

ICAEW chart of the week: Public sector segments 2022/23

Our chart this week illustrates just how centralised the UK is by looking at the disparity between receipts and expenditure between central and local government.

Step chart for the financial year 2022/23, showing receipts of £1,018bn (first column) less expenditure £1,155bn (middle column) and deficit £137bn (last column).

Central government: £931bn receipts - £919bn expenditure = £12bn surplus before intra-government transfers. 

Local government: £59bn receipts - £204bn = £145bn shortfall before transfers.

Other public sector: £28bn receipts - £32bn expenditure = £4bn shortfall before transfers.

Most people living in the UK would be surprised to discover just how big a gap there is between the council taxes and other income received by local councils, police and fire authorities, and the amount that they spend on public services.

Our chart of the week illustrates this disparity by looking at public sector segments in 2022/23 and how receipts and expenditure match up, before taking account of intra-government transfers.

Fiscal reporting in the National Accounts is broken down into five segments, of which the two largest are central government and local government. The former includes UK government departments, the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and several hundred government agencies and other public bodies. Local government principally consists of local authorities across the UK, the Greater London Authority and regional combined authorities in England, police and fire authorities in England and Wales, and local public transport bodies (the largest of which is Transport for London). The other three segments are public corporations (comprising publicly owned businesses plus social housing), funded pension schemes (mostly local authority schemes as central government schemes are generally unfunded), and the Bank of England.

The latest provisional numbers for the financial year ended 31 March 2023 reported that the UK public sector generated £1,018bn in receipts and incurred expenditure of £1,155bn, giving rise to a deficit of £137bn – a shortfall that has been funded by central government borrowing.

Central government raised £931bn in 2022/23 and spent £919bn, a net £12bn surplus before intra-government transfers. Local government received £59bn and spent £204bn, a shortfall of £145bn. And the three remaining fiscal segments together generated £28bn in receipts, and recorded £32bn in expenditure, a net shortfall of £4bn.

By excluding transfers in this way, the chart highlights just how centralised the UK state is, with local government dependent on central government largesse to pay for 69% of its spending in 2022/23. 

Local authorities received £41bn in council taxes and £18bn in non-tax receipts, with intra-government transfers amounting to £141bn, comprising £127bn in revenue grants and £14bn in capital grants. Transfers included a redistribution of £25bn in business rates, which although collected by local authorities are national taxes whose disposition is determined by central government. The rest came from a combination of block grants, subsidies, and specific grants (some of which councils need to bid for) as part of a complex and complicated web of funding arrangements for local authorities that makes them highly dependent on the decisions of government ministers.

After transfers there was a reported deficit of £137bn in central government and £4bn in local government, while £8bn in net transfers converted a £4bn shortfall between receipts and expenditure in the three other segments into a net £4bn surplus.

The big picture is of the most centralised state among medium and large economies in the developed world, with local authorities almost entirely dependent on the largesse of central government to fund the essential public services they deliver.

Distributing power to the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland has started to see a share of national taxes dispersed (such as income tax in Scotland and Wales) and some limited tax-raising powers. This contrasts with the debate about devolution in England, which has primarily focused on structures with the partial creation of a regional tier of local government in the form of combined authorities, rather than on more fundamental questions of whether this very centralised system of funding for local authorities needs reform.

This chart was originally published by ICAEW.

Public sector finances return to red

February fiscal deficit hits £17bn, while the cumulative deficit for 11 months of £132bn doesn’t include backdated public sector pay awards.

The monthly public sector finances for February 2023 released on Tuesday 21 March 2023 reported a provisional deficit for the month of £17bn, which is a return to red after a surplus of £8bn last month in January 2023. 

The deficit was £10bn more than the £7bn deficit reported for the same month last year (February 2022), as higher interest costs, higher inflation on index-linked debt, and the cost of the energy price guarantee for households and businesses incurred during the month drove up the need to borrow. 

The cumulative deficit for the first 11 months of the financial year was £132bn, which is £15bn more than in the same period last year but £155bn lower than in 2020/21 during the first stages of the pandemic. It was £78bn more than the deficit of £54bn reported for the first 11 months of 2019/20, the most recent pre-pandemic pre-cost-of-living-crisis comparative period. 

The reported deficit does not reflect backdated public sector pay settlements that have been or are expected to be agreed in March 2023, although the numbers are broadly in line with the £152bn estimated deficit for the full year in the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR)’s revised forecasts made at the time of the Spring Budget. This was lower than their previous forecast of £177bn in November, primarily because the energy price guarantee is costing less than anticipated.

Public sector net debt was £2,507bn or 99.2% of GDP at the end of February 2023. This is £692bn higher than net debt of £1,815bn on 31 March 2020, reflecting the huge sums borrowed since the start of the pandemic. The OBR’s latest forecast is for net debt to reach £2,546bn by March 2023 and to exceed £2.9trn by March 2028.

Tax and other receipts in the 11 months to 28 February 2023 amounted to £924bn, £91bn or 11% higher than a year previously. Higher income tax and national insurance receipts were driven by rising wages and the higher rate of national insurance for part of the year, while VAT receipts benefited from inflation in retail prices.

Expenditure excluding interest and investment for the 11 months of £888bn was £52bn or 6% higher than the same period in 2021/22, with Spending Review planned increases in spending, the effect of inflation, and the cost of energy support schemes partially offset by the furlough programmes and other pandemic spending in the comparative period not being repeated this year.

Interest charges of £120bn for the 11 months were £51bn or 73% higher than the £69bn reported for the equivalent period in 2021/22, through a combination of higher interest rates and higher inflation driving up the cost of RPI-linked debt. 

Cumulative net public sector investment to February was £48bn, £4bn more than this time last year. This is much less than might be expected given the Spending Review 2021 pencilled in significant increases in capital expenditure budgets in the current year.

The increase in net debt of £125bn since the start of the financial year comprised borrowing to fund the deficit for the 11 months of £132bn, less £7bn in net cash inflows from repayments of deferred taxes, and loans made to businesses during the pandemic, less funding for student, business and other loans together with working capital requirements.

Alison Ring OBE FCA, Public Sector and Taxation Director for ICAEW, said: “The public finances are back in the red this month as a deficit of £17bn brings the total for the 11 months to February to £132bn, with public sector net debt in excess of £2.5trn. Although broadly in line with the OBR’s improved estimate accompanying the Spring Budget, the numbers don’t reflect the cost of backdated public sector pay settlements to be recorded in the final month of the 2022/23 financial year.

“The chancellor still needs to top up departmental budgets for pay awards in the next financial year, reducing his capacity to address inflationary cost pressures in other areas. HS2 may not be the only capital programme at risk of being scaled back or delayed as he seeks to make savings.”

Table showing fiscal numbers for the last four 11 month periods to February.

Receipts - Expenditure - Interest - Net investment = Deficit - Other borrowing = Debt movement. 
Followed by Net debt and Net debt / GDP. All numbers in £bn, except for percentages.

Apr 2019 - Feb 2020: 755 - 720 - 53 - 36 = -54 + 22 = -32. 
Debt: 1,811, 84.2%.

Apr 2020 - Feb 2021: 721 - 906 - 40 - 62 = -287 - 56 = -343. 
Debt: 2,158, 98.0%.

Apr 2021 - Feb 2022: 832 - 836 - 69 - 44 = -56 - 85 = -202. 
Debt: 2,356, 97.0%.

Apr 2022 - Feb 2023: 924 - 888 - 120 - 48 =-132 + 7 = -125. 
Debt: 2,507, 99.2%.

Caution is needed with respect to the numbers published by the ONS, which are expected to be repeatedly revised as estimates are refined and gaps in the underlying data are filled.

The ONS made several revisions to prior period fiscal numbers to reflect revisions to estimates. These had the effect of reducing the reported fiscal deficit for the 10 months ended 31 January 2023 by £1bn to £116bn.

This article was originally published by ICAEW.

Chancellor spends forecast upside to leave public finances largely unchanged

Jeremy Hunt limits his tax and spending ambitions in the Spring Budget to stay within a very tight fiscal rule.

The Spring Budget 2023 for the government’s financial year of 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024 was presented by the Chancellor of the Exchequer to Parliament on Wednesday 15 March 2023, accompanied by medium-term economic and fiscal forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) covering the period up to 2027/28.

The fiscal numbers in the Budget are based on the National Accounts prepared in accordance with statistical standards. They differ in material respects from the financial performance and position that will eventually be reported in the Whole of Government Accounts prepared in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

A (slightly) lower fiscal deficit in 2023/24

Table 1 shows the Spring Budget estimate for the deficit in 2023/24 is £132bn, £8bn lower than the £140bn forecast in November 2022. Positive revisions to the forecast added £27bn to the bottom line, before £19bn from tax and spending decisions made by the Chancellor.

Image of Table 1 - showing changes in the OBR forecast for the fiscal deficit

Click on link to ICAEW version of article which has a machine readable table.

Forecast revisions in 2023/24 comprised £13bn in lower debt interest, £7bn less in energy support and £8bn in higher tax receipts, less £1bn other changes. The cost of tax and spending decisions in 2023/24 was estimated to be £8bn in lower corporation tax receipts from the full expensing of capital expenditure, £5bn from freezing fuel duties, £5bn from extending the energy price guarantee and other energy support measures, £2bn more for defence and security and £2bn from other decisions, less £3bn in indirect effects of those policy decisions on tax receipts and welfare spending.

Total receipts in 2023/24 are now expected to be £1,057bn (£2bn higher than previously forecast) and total managed expenditure is now anticipated to be £1,189bn (£10bn lower).

The forecast for the deficit in 2024/25 was up £1bn at £85bn and was unchanged in 2025/26 at £77bn, with upward revisions of £18bn and £19bn respectively offset by an estimated £19bn net cost of tax and spending decisions. The latter includes £3bn in 2024/25 and £4bn in 2025/26 for expanded childcare eligibility.

The final two years of the forecast were better by £17bn in 2026/27 (down to a fiscal deficit of £63bn) and by £20bn in 2027/28 (down to £49bn), although several commentators have pointed out this is on the basis of unrealistic spending assumptions that do not take account of significant pressures on public services.

In addition to forecasts for the next five years, the OBR also revised its estimate for the deficit in the current financial year ending 31 March 2023 to £152bn, £25bn lower than November’s estimate of £177bn. This is £53bn more than the OBR’s March 2022 estimate of £99bn and £69bn more than the November 2021 Budget estimate of £83m.

Table 2 provides a breakdown of the forecast changes by year, showing how lower debt interest and higher tax receipts flowing through the forecast period have provided the Chancellor with capacity to extend energy support, incentivise business investment, freeze fuel duty for yet another year (and extend the temporary 5p cut) and increase spending in specific areas.

Image of Table 2 - showing breakdown of forecast revisions and policy decisions.

Click on link to ICAEW version of article which has a machine readable table.

Receipts and expenditure development

As illustrated by Table 3, receipts are expected to rise from £1,020bn in the current financial year to £1,231bn in 2027/28, while expenditure excluding energy support and interest is expected to rise from £968bn in 2022/23 to £1,121bn in 2027/28.. 

Interest costs are expected to fall from £115bn this year to £77bn in 2025/26 as interest rates and inflation moderate, before rising to £97bn in 2027/28 based on a growing level of debt.

Net investment is expected to increase in 2023/24 as an £8bn one-off credit from changes in student loan terms in 2022/23 reverses, before declining gradually as capital expenditure budgets flatline and depreciation grows. Public sector gross investment is planned to be £134bn, £134bn, £133bn, £132bn and £132bn over the five years to 2027/28, in effect a cut in real terms over the forecast period.

Image of Table 3 - summarising the March 2023 OBR forecast

Click on link to ICAEW version of article which has a machine readable table.

The government’s secondary fiscal target is to keep the fiscal deficit below 3% of GDP by the end of the forecast period. Based on the March 2023 forecasts, it has headroom of 1.3% of GDP, or £39bn, against this target.

Table 4 provides a summary of the year-on-year changes in receipts and spending, together with the forecast for the increase in the size of the economy, including inflation. This highlights how tax and other receipts are expected to increase faster than the overall rate of growth in the overall size of the economy, while the government plans to constrain the average rise in expenditure excluding energy support and interest to 3.0% including inflation.

The former is principally a result of ‘fiscal drag’ as tax allowances are frozen, bringing in proportionately more in tax as incomes rise with inflation. The latter reflects what is generally considered to be unrealistic plans to constrain public spending in the context of an expected 9% rise in the number of pensioners over the five-year period (that will add to pensions, welfare, health and social care spending), pressure on public sector pay and the deteriorating quality of public services.

Image of Table 4 - year-on-year % changes in receipts and spending.

Click on link to ICAEW version of article which has a machine readable table.

Average nominal GDP growth over the five years of 3.3% combines average real-terms economic growth of 1.7% a year and inflation of 1.6%, the latter using the GDP deflator, a ‘whole economy’ measure of inflation. This is different to consumer price inflation, which is forecast to fall to 4.1% in 2023/24 and average 1.4% over the five years to 2027/28. 

Public sector net debt

Lower deficits over the forecast period translate into lower borrowing requirements, reducing forecasts for public sector net debt from just under £3.0trn to £2.9trn. This is partly increased or offset by changes in the forecasts for financial and other transactions and working capital movements.

Table 5 shows how forecast public sector net debt is now expected to reach £2,909bn by March 2028, £54bn less than was forecast in November. Although an improvement, debt at the end of the forecast period is expected to be £1,089bn higher than £1,820bn reported for March 2020 before the pandemic, reflecting the large amounts borrowed during the pandemic, in addition to borrowing planned over the next five years. 

Image of Table 15- showing changes in the OBR forecast for public sector net debt.

Click on link to ICAEW version of article which has a machine readable table.

The government’s primary fiscal target is based on ‘underlying debt’, a non-generally accepted statistical practice measure that excludes the Bank of England and hence quantitative easing balances. Underlying debt needs to be falling as a proportion of GDP between the fourth and fifth year of the forecast period. 

The forecast gives the Chancellor just £6.5bn in headroom against this target, with underlying debt / GDP expected to fall from 94.8% to 94.6% between March 2027 and March 2028.

Fiscal rules limit ambitions for tax and spending

Following the disastrous ‘mini-Budget’ of his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor’s principal goal has been to stabilise the public finances to provide confidence to debt markets. To do this he has prioritised meeting his fiscal rules over incentivising business investment, cutting taxes and increasing defence spending. He has also adopted what are generally considered to be unrealistic assumptions about public spending in the later years of the forecast to keep within his self-imposed fiscal rules.

This has led to the Chancellor announcing ‘ambitions’ to extend the full expensing of capital expenditure beyond three years and to increase defence and security spending to 2.5% of GDP, as well as continuing to plan for increases in fuel duties each year despite the repeated practice of cancelling these rises. 

Because these are ambitions and not plans, they are not incorporated into the forecasts enabling fiscal targets to be met. The OBR reports that continuing to cancel fuel duty rises each year would reduce the headroom to just £2.8bn, while converting the Chancellor’s ambitions to extend full expensing beyond three years and to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP into formal plans would cause him to breach his primary fiscal rule.

Conclusion

The overall fiscal position remains weak, with public finances vulnerable to potential economic shocks.

The Chancellor has followed the practice of many of his predecessors in increasing planned borrowing when fiscal forecasts worsen, as occurred in November 2022, only to then use upsides from improvements in subsequent forecasts to fund new tax and spending commitments. This ratchets up borrowing and debt as forecasts fluctuate and creates instability in both tax policy and public spending plans.

The consequence is a relatively unchanged fiscal position for the financial year commencing 1 April 2023 and the two subsequent financial years, as tax and spending decisions offset forecast upsides. And although there is an anticipated improvement in the projected fiscal position in the final two years of the OBR’s five-year forecast (after the next general election), the likelihood is that it will be offset in due course by the reality of pressures on public service and welfare budgets.

There is a reason why the first Budget following a general election typically sees taxes rise and the Spring Budget 2023 suggests that this pattern is likely to be repeated, irrespective of whichever party wins power.

Read more about the Spring Budget 2023.

This article was originally published by ICAEW.

ICAEW chart of the week: Spring Budget 2023

My chart this week is on the Chancellor’s tax and spending plans for the coming financial year commencing on 1 April 2023.

Column chart showing the final fiscal estimate for 2022/23 and the Budget estimate for 2023/24.

Final estimate 2022/23
Deficit £152bn.
Receipts £1,020bn =  Taxes £922bn + other receipts £98bn. 
Spending £1,172bn = expenditure £968bn + energy support £30bn + interest £115bn + net investment £59bn.

Budget estimate 2023/24
Deficit £132bn.
Receipts £1,057bn =  Taxes £950bn + other receipts £107bn. 
Spending £1,189bn = expenditure £1,015bn + energy support £5bn + interest £95bn + net investment £74bn.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt presented his first Budget to Parliament on Wednesday 15 March 2023, setting out his formal Budget estimate for the financial year ended 31 March 2024 (2023/24) accompanied by fiscal forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) for the period up to 2027/28 and the OBR’s final estimate for the current financial year ending on 31 March 2023.

Our chart this week starts by summarising the final estimate for 2022/23, highlighting an expected shortfall of £152bn between anticipated receipts of £1,020bn and spending of £1,172bn. This is followed by a similar analysis for the budget year of 2023/24, with a deficit of £132bn resulting from a shortfall between estimated taxes and other receipts of £1,057bn and spending of £1,189bn.

Receipts in 2022/23 and 2023/34 respectively comprise £922bn and £950bn in tax and £98bn and £107bn in other receipts. The increase in tax of 3.0% is perhaps lower than might be expected given the level of inflation and the new higher rate of corporation tax from 1 April 2023, with an anticipated 10% growth in corporation tax receipts (net of full expensing of business investment) offset by flat or relatively small growth in other taxes. Other receipts are expected to increase by 9%, primarily the effect of higher interest rates on investments.

Total managed expenditure in 2022/23 and 2023/24 respectively comprise £968bn and £1,015bn in current expenditure excluding energy support costs and debt interest, £30bn and £5bn in energy support packages, £115bn and £95bn in debt interest, and £59bn and £74bn in net investment.

Current expenditure excluding energy support costs and debt interest is expected to increase by 4.9% in 2023/24 compared with 2022/23, more than the 2.5% ‘whole economy’ measure of inflation used by the government and the 4.1% forecast for consumer price inflation. This partly relates to inflation in the current financial year feeding through into next year’s budgets, as well as spending measures announced by the Chancellor.

The three-month extension of the energy price guarantee is anticipated to cost £3bn in 2023/24, with other energy support measures adding a further £2bn to the forecast.

Debt interest is expected to fall by 17% to £95bn, principally because of the effect of a much lower rate of inflation on index-linked debt more than offsetting higher interest rates overall.

Public sector net investment comprises gross investment of £116bn and £134bn in the two years respectively, net of depreciation of £57bn and £60bn respectively. The increase in gross investment is flattered by a £8bn one-off credit in the current financial year arising from changes to student loans, which if excluded implies an 8% increase in capital expenditure and other public investment overall. This reflects delays in capital programmes that are expected to come in significantly under budget in the current financial year but cost more in the next, relatively high construction price inflation, and an extra £2bn of capital investment allocated to defence.

The final estimate for the deficit in the current financial year of £152bn is £25bn lower than was expected in the OBR’s November 2022 forecast of £177bn, while the Budget estimate for 2023/24 of £132bn is £8bn lower than the £140bn forecast last time. The reduction in 2022/23 reflects the benefit of a slightly improved economic outlook, with policy decisions for the last couple of weeks of the financial year by the Chancellor netting off to close to nil. This contrasts with 2023/24, where forecast upsides amounting to around £27bn have been mostly offset by a net cost of £19bn from tax and spending decisions.

Overall, the chart highlights just how much money the UK raises in tax and incurs in public spending. Tax and other receipts are expected to approach £1.1trn in the coming financial year, while public spending is anticipated to be just under £1.2trn. 

On a per capita basis in 2023/24 this is equivalent to receipts and spending of approximately £1,290 per month and £1,450 per month for each person in the UK respectively, a shortfall of £160 per person per month that needs to be funded by borrowing.

The challenge for the Chancellor is that with the number of pensioners projected to increase by 9% over the next five years (with consequent implications for spending on pensions, welfare, health and social care), there is not much room to invest in public services or in infrastructure at the same time as also reducing taxes as he would very much like to do. 

The Chancellor wasn’t able to square this circle in the Spring Budget 2023, so watch this space to see whether he can be any more successful in future fiscal events.

This chart was originally published by ICAEW.

ICAEW chart of the week: Fluctuating fiscal forecasts

Ahead of the Spring Budget on 15 March, I take a look at how the official forecast for the 2022/23 fiscal deficit has fluctuated through successive forecasts.

Column chart showing the forecast fiscal deficit for the financial year 2022/23 over successive forecasts.

First four columns (*) have £21bn added to them for methodology changes.

Nov 2017 £26bn *
Mar 2018 £21bn *
Oct 2018 £21bn *
Mar 2019 £14bn *
Mar 2020 £61bn
Nov 2020 £105bn
Mar 2021 £107bn
Oct 2021 £83bn - Budget estimate
Mar 2022 £99bn - revised estimate
Nov 2022 £177bn - revised estimate
Mar 2023 TBC

My chart this week is on the topic of fiscal forecasting, and how the forecast deficit for the UK government’s financial year ending 31 March 2023 (2022/23) has changed over the course of five or so years of official forecasts. 

Our story starts with the Autumn Budget in November 2017, when the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) first published a medium-term fiscal forecast that extended to 2022/23. After plugging economic assumptions into its model and combining it with the government’s plans for public spending, it came up with a forecast of £26bn for the 2022/23 fiscal deficit, the shortfall between receipts and public spending calculated in accordance with statistical rules.

Then Chancellor Philip Hammond was at that time pretty positive about the economic prospects for the UK, despite weak productivity causing him to abandon the government’s medium-term plan to completely eliminate the budget deficit. Instead, he settled for a more modest objective of a balanced current budget and a falling debt-to-GDP ratio, extending austerity policies to cut public spending.

The next few fiscal events saw the OBR revise down its forecast for the 2022/23 deficit in the light of moderately better economic data each time. This saw the forecast for the 2022/23 deficit reduce to £21bn in the March 2018 forecast, stay at £21bn in October 2018 and fall to £14bn in the March 2019 forecast. 

The forecasts up to this point were before methodology changes announced in 2019 relating to the treatment of student loans and other items. According to the OBR these had the effect of increasing the forecast for the fiscal deficit in 2022/23 by an estimated £21bn.

The calling of a general election in December 2019 prevented Chancellor Sajid Javid from presenting a Budget in November 2019, so the OBR had to wait until March 2020 to publish its next forecast. At this point, 2022/23 was in the middle of the forecast period and Rishi Sunak’s first fiscal event as Chancellor saw a £26bn increase in the 2022/23 deficit to £61bn in an ‘end-to-austerity’ Budget that saw £46bn in extra planned spending compared with previous forecasts.

Frustratingly for the OBR, its forecasts that day were immediately out of date, as initial emergency pandemic measures were decided too late to be incorporated into its calculations. While these and subsequent temporary measures to support households and businesses through the pandemic primarily affected the 2020/21 and 2021/22 financial years, the economic hit caused by COVID-19 was the primary reason for the OBR increasing its forecast for the 2022/23 fiscal deficit to £105bn in November 2020.

March 2021 saw a small tweak to the forecast to £107bn, but the Autumn Budget and Spending Review in November 2021 saw an improvement to £83bn as the economy emerged from the lockdown phases of the pandemic in a slightly better place than was previously anticipated, with higher spending funded by planned tax rises.

This positive move went into reverse in March 2022 as the OBR revised its Budget estimate upwards to £99bn, reflecting rising interest rates on government debt and the government’s initial response to an emerging cost-of-living crisis. 

The OBR was not asked to produce an official forecast to accompany short-lived Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax-cutting ‘mini-Budget’ in September. At £177bn the OBR forecast for the 2022/23 fiscal deficit in November 2022 was eye-watering enough, and that was after current Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s Budget had reversed most of his predecessor’s tax cuts.

Lower than anticipated wholesale energy prices have led several commentators to suggest that the OBR’s final estimate for the fiscal deficit could be revised down by £30bn or more when it presents its medium-term forecasts up to 2027/28 to accompany the Spring Budget on 15 March 2023. As the chart suggests, this is not a ‘windfall’ as some commentators have claimed. Even if the gap between receipts and spending narrows, the deficit will still be significantly higher than the £83bn official estimate included in the Budget for 2022/23 presented to Parliament.

Fiscal forecasting is of course a very difficult task even in normal times. The deficit is the difference between two very large numbers – receipts of just over a trillion pounds and public spending of nearly £1.2trn – that can each move up or down significantly as economic conditions change, and policy choices are made. Add to that a global pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis and an uncertain policy outlook, and it is perhaps unsurprising that the forecasts have changed so much over the past five years. 

In an uncertain world, fiscal forecasts fluctuate.

This chart was originally published by ICAEW.

January surplus small comfort for Chancellor ahead of Spring Budget

Better than expected self assessment tax receipts helped generate a small fiscal surplus of £5bn in January, reducing the year-to-date deficit to £117bn, £7bn more than the comparative period in the previous financial year.

The monthly public sector finances for January 2023 released on Tuesday 21 February 2023 reported a provisional surplus for the month of £5bn. This was a significant improvement over the deficit of £26bn reported for the previous month (December 2022), but £7bn less than the surplus reported for the same month last year (January 2022).

A surplus arose primarily because better than expected self assessment tax receipts were sufficient to offset the effect of higher interest costs, higher inflation on index-linked debt, and the cost of the energy price guarantee for households and businesses incurred during the month. January also saw the Office for National Statistics (ONS) record a £2bn charge for custom duties that the UK had failed to collect when it was a member of the EU Customs Union.

The cumulative deficit for the first 10 months of the financial year was £117bn, which is £7bn more than in the same period last year but £155bn lower than in 2020/21 during the first stages of the pandemic. It was £64bn more than the deficit of £53bn reported for the first 10 months of 2019/20, the most recent pre-pandemic pre-cost-of-living-crisis comparative period. 

The deficit was £22bn below the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR)’s revised forecast made at the time of the Autumn Statement in November, primarily because the energy price guarantee has cost less than anticipated.

Public sector net debt was £2,492bn or 98.9% of GDP at the end of January 2023, dipping below the £2.5tn reported last month because of corrections to prior month data. This is £672bn higher than net debt of £1,820bn at 31 March 2020, reflecting the huge sums borrowed since the start of the pandemic. The OBR’s latest forecast is for net debt to reach £2,571bn by March 2023 and to approach £3trn by March 2028.

Tax and other receipts in the 10 months to 31 January 2023 amounted to £839bn, £88bn or 12% higher than a year previously. Higher income tax and national insurance receipts were driven by rising wages and the higher rate of national insurance for part of the year, while VAT receipts benefited from inflation in retail prices.

Expenditure excluding interest and investment for the ten months of £802bn was £41bn or 5% higher than the same period in 2021/22, with Spending Review planned increases in spending, the effect of inflation, and the cost of energy support schemes partially offset by the furlough programmes and other pandemic spending in the comparative period not being repeated this year.

Interest charges of £110bn for the 10 months were £49bn or 80% higher than the £61bn reported for the equivalent period in 2021/22, through a combination of higher interest rates and higher inflation driving up the cost of RPI-linked debt. 

Cumulative net public sector investment to January was £44bn, £5bn more than a year previously. This is much less than might be expected given the Spending Review 2021 pencilled in significant increases in capital expenditure budgets in the current year.

The increase in net debt of £120bn since the start of the financial year comprised borrowing to fund the deficit for the 10 months of £117bn together with a further £3bn to fund student loans, lending to businesses and others, and working capital requirements, net of cash inflows from repayments of deferred taxes and loans made to businesses during the pandemic.

Alison Ring OBE FCA, Public Sector and Taxation Director for ICAEW, said: “With a small surplus, January’s fiscal numbers benefited from stronger self-assessment tax receipts than expected, providing some comfort to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt as he assembles his first Budget. The deficit for the current financial year is still on track to be one of the highest ever recorded, reaching £117bn for the ten months to January 2023 after energy support and interest costs more than offset the benefit of higher tax receipts.

Although it appears that inflation has peaked, the near-term economic outlook continues to deteriorate and so calls for immediate tax cuts are likely to remain unanswered. We are asking the Chancellor to take urgent action to eliminate the backlog at HMRC that is inhibiting business growth, and to make improving the resilience of the UK economy and the public finances a priority.”

Table containing four columns with the cumulative ten month numbers from April to January to Jan 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 - receipts, expenditure, interest, net investment, deficit, other borrowing, debt movement, net debt and net debt / GDP.

Click on link at end of this post to go to the ICAEW website for a readable version.

Caution is needed with respect to the numbers published by the ONS, which are expected to be repeatedly revised as estimates are refined and gaps in the underlying data are filled.

The ONS made several revisions to prior period fiscal numbers to reflect revisions to estimates. These had the effect of reducing the reported fiscal deficit for the nine months ended 31 December 2022 by £6bn to £122bn and reducing the reported fiscal deficit for the year to 31 March 2022 by £1bn to £122bn.

For further information, read the public sector finances release for January 2023.

This article was originally published by ICAEW.

Public sector net debt tops £2.5trn for the first time

The highest December deficit on record has been driven by higher debt interest costs and the cost of energy support schemes.

The monthly public sector finances for December 2022, released on Tuesday 24 January 2023, reported a provisional deficit for the month of £27bn, the highest December deficit since records began in 1993. This was despite a mild December helping to mitigate some of the cost of energy support schemes.

The deficit for the month of £27bn was £12bn higher than the equivalent month in the previous financial year (December 2021) and £8bn more than the previous month (November 2022).

This brought the cumulative deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year to £128bn, which is £3bn below the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR)’s revised forecast made at the time of the Autumn Statement last November. This substantially exceeds the budget of £99bn for the entire financial year to March 2023 forecast by the OBR at the time of the Spring Statement as higher interest costs, the effect of higher inflation on index-linked debt, and the cost of the energy price guarantee for households and businesses over the winter all add to public spending.

Public sector net debt was £2,504bn or 99.5% of GDP at the end of December 2022, up £131bn from £2,373bn at the end of March 2022. This is £684bn higher than net debt of £1,820bn on 31 March 2020, reflecting the huge sums borrowed since the start of the pandemic. 

The OBR’s latest forecast is for net debt to reach £2,571bn by March 2023 and to approach £3trn by March 2028, although energy prices falling faster than expected may help improve the outlook somewhat.

The cumulative deficit for the first three quarters of the financial year of £128bn was £5bn lower than this time last year and £143bn lower than in 2020/21 during the first stages of the pandemic. However, it was £67bn more than the deficit of £61bn reported for the first nine months of 2019/20, the most recent pre-pandemic pre-cost-of-living-crisis comparative period. 

Tax and other receipts in the three quarters to 31 December 2022 amounted to £721bn, £73bn or 11% higher than a year previously. Higher income tax and national insurance receipts were driven by rising wages and the higher rate of national insurance, while VAT receipts benefited from inflation in retail prices. Year-to-date receipts included £3.7bn accrued for the energy profits levy ‘windfall tax’.

Expenditure excluding interest and investment for the nine months of £716bn was £30bn or 4% higher than the same period in 2021/22, with Spending Review planned increases in spending, high inflation and the cost of energy support schemes more than offsetting the furlough programmes and other pandemic spending in the comparative period not repeated this year.

Interest charges of £100bn for the three quarters were £46bn or 85% higher than the £54bn reported for the equivalent period in 2021/22, through a combination of higher interest rates and higher inflation driving up the cost of RPI-linked debt. 

Cumulative net public sector investment to December was £33bn. This is £2bn more than a year previously, much less than might be expected given the Spending Review 2021 pencilled in significant increases in capital expenditure budgets in the current year.

The increase in net debt of £131bn since the start of the financial year comprised borrowing to fund the deficit for the nine months of £128bn together with a further £3bn to fund student loans, lending to businesses and others, and working capital requirements, net of cash inflows from repayments of deferred taxes and loans made to businesses during the pandemic.

Alison Ring OBE FCA, Public Sector and Taxation Director for ICAEW, said: “A mild December was not enough to prevent public debt from reaching £2.5tn for the first time, in a disappointing set of numbers for December 2022. However, the Chancellor will take comfort that cumulative borrowing for the first three quarters of the financial year was less than feared when the budget for 2022/23 was updated back in November. Energy prices coming down much faster than expected should also improve the outlook for the final quarter as well as the new financial year.

“The deficit is still on track to be one of the highest ever recorded in peacetime and stabilising the fiscal position is the best that Jeremy Hunt can hope for in the short term. Amid a sea of red ink, sustainable public finances remain a distant prospect for now.”

Table showing trends in receipts, expenditure, interest, net investment, deficit, other borrowing, debt movement, net debt and net debt / GDP for the nine months Apr-Dec 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Click on the link to ICAEW article at the end for a readable version of this table.

Caution is needed with respect to the numbers published by the ONS, which are expected to be repeatedly revised as estimates are refined and gaps in the underlying data are filled.

The ONS made several revisions to prior period fiscal numbers to reflect revisions to estimates. These had the effect of reducing the reported fiscal deficit for the eight months ended 30 November 2022 by £5bn to £101bn and reducing the reported fiscal deficit for the year to 31 March 2022 by £2bn to £123bn.

The revisions in the current year principally relate to an increase of £4bn in the estimate for accrued corporation tax receipts at 30 November 2022, while the prior year numbers were updated to reflect a £0.7bn correction to reported VAT cash receipts during 2021/22 and a £1bn increase in the estimate for accrued corporation tax receipts at 31 March 2022.

This article was originally published by ICAEW.

ICAEW chart of the week: Autumn Statement

The public finances have been a rollercoaster ride over the last few months, as illustrated by this week’s chart showing how the forecast for the fiscal deficit in 2026/27 has changed since the Spring Budget.

Step chart showing changes in the forecast deficit for 2026/27:

Spring Budget forecast: -£32bn
Higher interest charges: -£47bn
Economic forecast changes: -£28bn
Mini-Budget measures: -£45bn
Mini-Budget reversals: +£29bn
Autumn Statement measures: +£43bn
= Autumn Statement forecast: -£80bn

Former Chancellor and now Prime Minister Rishi Sunak expressed some optimism back in March when he presented his Spring Budget, commenting how he remained committed to achieving a current budget surplus despite the huge amounts spent supporting individuals and businesses through the pandemic, and the support he was then offering to help with energy bills as they started to soar.

My chart this week illustrates how the fiscal situation has deteriorated significantly as rising interest rates, accelerating inflation, and an economy entering recession have adversely affected the public finances. Together with the additional energy support measures announced by then Prime Minister Liz Truss in September, the shortfall between receipts and expenditure is expected to be £270bn higher over a five-year period to 2026/27 than was forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility back in March.

In 2026/27 itself (the year ending 31 March 2027), interest charges are expected to be £47bn higher than previously forecast, while tax receipts and other forecast changes are expected to require an extra £28bn in additional funding (of which £25bn relates to lower tax receipts). 

In theory this would result in a deficit of £107bn, which is why it was surprising that then Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng decided to announce unfunded tax cuts amounting to £45bn a year by 2026/27. Although Kwarteng was hoping his planned tax cuts would help stimulate the economy, if they hadn’t then the deficit could have risen to more than £150bn, an unsustainable level that caused financial markets to take fright – even if they and we didn’t have the official numbers at that point.

Reversals to the mini-Budget followed as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak attempted to reassure markets of their fiscal credibility, with £43bn in tax and spending changes to plug some of the gap. These comprise tax rises amounting to around £23bn a year (more than offsetting the £16bn of tax cuts retained from the mini-Budget), together with £20bn in lower levels of public spending than previously planned.

Together the forecast changes and government decisions give rise to a forecast deficit of £80bn in 2026/27, significantly higher than previously forecast. This is not a comfortable place for the public finances, with the Chancellor having to abandon the government’s previous commitment to achieving a current budget surplus in addition to, as expected, deferring the point at which he expects to see the underlying debt-to-GDP ratio start to fall from three to five years into the future.

Both tax and spending measures primarily involve fiscal drag, freezing tax allowances so that more people are brought into paying tax or paying tax at higher rates, and severely constraining public spending. Although it might be theoretically possible to hold the line on both tax and spending constraint for the next five years, there are likely to be some adjustments needed in the Spring Budget as pressures on public services mount, while the most difficult decisions have been postponed until after the next general election.

This week’s chart is not a pretty picture.

This chart was originally published by ICAEW.

Why is cutting public spending so difficult?

Martin Wheatcroft FCA, external adviser on public finances to ICAEW, assesses what options the government has to reduce the gap between receipts and expenditure.

Despite rolling back £32bn out of the £45bn of tax cuts announced in the mini-Budget, Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt is expected to announce tax rises as well as spending cuts when he sets out the Government’s Autumn Statement and medium-term fiscal plan on 17 November. 

The consensus is that he needs to find around £50bn a year to reduce the gap between receipts and expenditure if he wants to get the public finances back under control and provide himself with some headroom in case the situation deteriorates further. This could include extending beyond April 2026 the freeze in personal tax allowances announced by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak when he was Chancellor, as well as scaling back the ‘levelling up’ agenda of former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

You’d think trimming 3% or so off an annual public spending bill of over a trillion pounds a year wouldn’t be that difficult, but each of the main options for cutting spending in the medium term are unpalatable and politically challenging:

  • Real-terms cuts in pensions and welfare are possible but difficult to deliver politically during a cost-of-living crisis, as previous Prime Minister Liz Truss discovered when she was forced to deny she was planning to abandon the triple-lock mechanism. 
  • Real-terms cuts in public sector pay are likely but come with the prospect of much greater disruption from industrial action and increasing difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff. 
  • Cutting investment in infrastructure and capital programmes is the easiest option to achieve but comes with risks to future economic growth and business investment.
  • Greater efficiency is possible but practically difficult to deliver, with significant project delivery risks and the need for sufficient capital investment to be successful.
  • Higher fees and charges are possible but risk a political backlash.
  • Lowering public service outputs or quality is possible but there are practical limits to how far you can continue to cut funding for many public services without adverse effects.

Forecasts for public spending

Total managed expenditure is budgeted to amount to £1,087bn in the current financial year ending 31 March 2023 (2022/23), equivalent to approximately £1,340 per month for each of the 67.5m people who live in the UK, or £3,220 per month for each of the 28.1m UK households.

Based on inflation assumptions decided on back in March, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) projected that total spending would experience a real-terms cut of 1.2% to £1,100bn in 2023/24, and then real-terms increases of 0.5% to £1,127bn in 2024/25, 1.4% to £1,166bn in 2025/26 and 1.4% to £1,206bn in 2026/27. 

Forecasts for total spending are expected to be revised upwards by the OBR when it reports on 17 November. They will need to reflect higher rates of inflation, significantly higher interest rates, and the cost of the energy support packages announced in May and September 2022 (amended in October). The Institute for Fiscal Studies’ high-level forecast following the mini-Budget suggested that these factors could increase total spending to £1,185bn in 2022/23, £1,201bn in 2023/24, £1,165bn in 2024/25m £1,192bn in 2025/26 and £1,233bn in 2026/27, up £98bn, £101bn, £38bn, £26bn and £27bn respectively from the OBR March forecast.

Fiscal targets

When former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced on 23 September that he was scrapping the fiscal targets approved by the House of Commons in January this year, he was continuing a pattern of abandoning a succession of fiscal targets as it becomes clear that they have not been, or cannot be, met. Abandoning the existing targets without announcing new ones to take their place is likely to have been one of several contributory factors to the adverse reaction by markets to his proposals.

The latest set of abandoned fiscal targets required each five-year fiscal plan to aim for both a current budget surplus and for a falling debt to GDP ratio by the third year of each forecast period. Kwarteng had been under pressure to replace these with a more realistic fiscal target based on the debt to GDP ratio starting to fall by the fifth year of each forecast period. It is likely that the new Chancellor will adopt this or an even stricter set of targets in the hope of regaining credibility lost by the UK Government over the past few weeks.

Assuming that £43bn of the £45bn annual tax cuts announced in the mini-Budget were implemented, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimated that achieving a falling debt to GDP ratio after 2026/27 would require annual tax rises or public spending cuts of £62bn by 2026/27, equivalent to 5% of total spending that year. On 17 October, the Chancellor brought this estimate down by £27bn, reversing a further £21bn of the mini-Budget tax measures and adding back £6bn a year by cancelling the previously planned one percentage point cut in the rate of basic income tax from April 2024. 

This would suggest that the gap remaining to be filled with other tax and spending measures could be in the order of £35bn a year, equivalent to around 3% of total public spending in 2026/27. Adding in a further £10bn to £15bn of tax rises to provide headroom brings this to around £50bn in total.

The IFS highlighted significant risks in its forecast, which assumes that inflation does not persist in the medium term and that economic growth remains below 2%, consistent with the post-financial crisis trend. The IFS also based its forecast on a relatively shallow recession and highlighted how dependent it was on the level of interest rates, which at that point had spiked in response to the mini-Budget. These risks could easily increase the size of the gap between forecast receipts and spending that the Chancellor needs to fill. The Chancellor will be hoping that government borrowing costs continue to moderate following the appointment of Rishi Sunak as Prime Minister, providing the Government with some headroom in the official fiscal forecast.

What makes up public spending?

Budgeted public spending of £1,087bn in the current financial year ending 31 March 2023 can be broadly split between £295bn (27%) on pensions and welfare, £252bn (23%) on health and social care, £436bn (40%) on public services, and £104bn (10%) on debt and other interest. 

Spending on public services other than health and social care is budgeted to comprise £126bn (12% of total spending) on education, £59bn (5%) on defence and security, £47bn (4%) on transport, £43bn (4%) on public order and safety and £161bn (15%) on all the other services that central and local government provide.

These numbers are on a fiscal basis as presented in the National Accounts, in accordance with statistical standards that include capital expenditure net of depreciation. They exclude long-term expenditures such as accrued public sector pension obligations that are reported in the IFRS-based Whole of Government Accounts. They are also net of approximately £55bn in fees and charges and £5bn from the proceeds of asset sales.

Hands tied on spending

As the Prime Minister and Chancellor look for potential savings, they are finding that their hands are tied by the financial commitments made by successive governments, especially since the second world war. These commitments created the welfare state we know today, with pensions, welfare benefits, health and social care together now making up half of total public spending. Since the last general election this government has added to these commitments, including a significant expansion in eligibility for adult social care and increasing the value of state pensions through the triple lock mechanism. 

Under the long-standing ‘pay-as-you-go’ approach to funding government activities, no money is set aside to meet financial commitments made. Instead, tax receipts, cost savings or additional borrowing are used to pay for financial commitments as they fall due each year. There is no sovereign wealth fund to cushion the blow or to dip into.

The principal challenge for the Chancellor in looking for savings is that more people are living longer. The number of pensioners is expected to increase by 3.3m or 27% from 12.2m to 15.5m over the next 20 years, despite an increase in the state pension age from 66 to 67 over that time. This is driving up the cost of the largest line items within the overall budget: the state pension, the NHS, and social care budgets, over a period when the working age population, the group that pays the most in taxes, is projected to increase by just 4%.

The impact of a growing number of pensioners makes the job of finding savings that much harder, as the savings need to be proportionately larger from other parts of the budget. 

Any savings are also on top of hoped-for efficiency savings that have already been incorporated into departmental budgets to stay within the existing spending envelope, as well as dealing with rising procurement costs, higher energy bills and pressure to increase public sector salaries.

Pensions and welfare – £295bn or 27% of budgeted spending

Pensions and welfare spending can be broken down between £121bn for the state pension and pensioner benefits, £48bn in incapacity and disability benefits, and £126bn in working age, child and other welfare benefits and social protection.

Pensions spending is expected to increase over the next five years from a combination of a 1.1m or 9% increase in the number of pensioners and the ratchet effect of the Government’s triple-lock manifesto commitment to raise the state pension in line with whichever is higher: earnings, inflation or 2.5% .

One option to save money compared with existing forecasts would be to restrict the increase in state pensions to below inflation, either by abandoning the triple lock in this Parliament or not re-committing to it beyond the next general election. However, while Rishi Sunak was able to suspend the triple lock in April 2022 on a one-off basis, it is likely to be extremely difficult to find the political support needed to cut the state’s contribution to pensioner incomes in real terms sufficiently to offset a 9% increase in pensioner numbers over the next five years, or a 27% increase over 20 years.

The government could accelerate planned increases in the state pension age, currently set to go from 66 to 67 by 2028 and to 68 by 2046, although to do so might break a promise to give at least 10 years’ notice to those affected. Another option might be to reformulate the triple-lock mechanism, removing the ratchet effect by making it cumulative. This would see above-earnings rises in one year offset by below-earnings rises in subsequent years, subject to not falling below inflation or 2.5% in any particular year.

Real-term cuts in incapacity and disability benefits would also be politically unpalatable, as would further restricting eligibility criteria, even if pencilled in for subsequent years. Several commentators have suggested that the recent rise in the number of people suffering from health conditions and withdrawing from the workforce is because of NHS treatment backlogs that have been exacerbated by the pandemic. One way of cutting the cost of these benefits would be to provide additional funding to the NHS in the short to medium term, which would add rather than subtract from spending in the next few years, even if there is a positive financial benefit in the longer term.

That leaves welfare benefits for those of working age and children, where the IFS has suggested that indexing the uprating of working-age benefits in April 2023 and April 2024 to earnings rather than inflation could reduce the annual welfare bill by £13bn by 2026/27 when compared with existing forecasts. The risk here is that a recession could see the number of claimants rise significantly even if it were possible to cut the amount paid out to each claimant in real terms. Again, proposing real-terms cuts in the financial support offered to the poorest households of this scale during a cost-of-living crisis is likely to be politically challenging.

Another option would be to increase the minimum wage given that more than half of any wage increase would be recovered from claimants on universal credit. This is likely to be difficult to implement in the next couple of years given the current cost-of-doing-business crisis, but it might be possible to pencil in a rise in the second half of the fiscal period. 

One area where money could be saved is in tackling fraud and error, with the Department for Work and Pensions estimating that overpayments amounted to £8.6bn in 2021/22, partly offset by underpayments of £2.6bn. However, to do so effectively would likely require a significant simplification of the welfare system, a politically challenging task given this would involve both winners and losers.

Health and social care – £252bn or 23% of total spending

The budget for health and social care this year comprises £211bn for the NHS and other health care, and £41bn for social care, which are both driven by the number of pensioners and the level of long-term health conditions in the adult population in particular.

The focus in recent years has been to constrain the rise in spending on health care on a per patient basis through a combination of greater efficiency and constraining staff pay, while social care funding has been restricted to constrain supply. This has seen a decline in service standards in both health and social care, exacerbated by the pandemic. While there are opportunities to find savings by tackling waste and improving efficiency further, this will be difficult without greater capital investment in hospitals, primary care facilities and digital technology.

In practice, staff shortages, rising drug prices, and a weak pound are likely to add to cost pressures on the health budget, at the same time as calls grow to address poor performance across all areas of service delivery, including ambulance waiting times, long waiting lists for treatment and inadequate cancer outcomes, as well as expanding coverage in areas such as mental health.

Social care spending is also under pressure, not only because of rising pensioner numbers but also because of an expansion of eligibility for adult social care announced by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. His successor, Prime Minister Liz Truss, made a commitment to retain this expansion despite abolishing the health and social care levy that was going to fund it, adding to size of the problem. There are strong arguments for increasing spending on social care in the near-term to relieve pressure on the NHS.

Potential savings in the short-term are likely to be through pay restraint, and in the medium-term through greater use of technology and consolidation of services. Deferring the introduction of the social care cap could ease funding pressures for a time but would not help the Chancellor achieve his targets in the longer-term. He could save some money compared with existing plans by indexing or otherwise increasing eligibility thresholds for social care over time. 

Risks include a further worsening of health outcomes and service standards, a potential collapse in services over this and subsequent winters, and industrial action.

Education – £126bn or 12% of budgeted spending

Education spending this year is estimated to comprise £53bn on secondary education, £34bn or so on primary and pre-school, £27bn on universities and higher education, and £12bn on training, further education, and other education services. 

While the falling birth rate is expected to reduce the numbers attending primary schools by around 10% or so over the next five years, the numbers going through (more expensive) secondary schooling are still increasing. In the near term, primary and secondary schools are already struggling to cope with a national pay settlement this year that was higher than allowed for in their existing budgets.

Restraining staff pay and constraining staff numbers are likely to be the main focuses of any cost savings that might be achievable from the schools’ budget, for example by increasing class sizes or merging schools – particularly at primary level. However, teacher shortages, particularly in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, may make cutting pay in real terms difficult to achieve. 

University student numbers are expected to grow by around 6% over the next five years, although the per head cost should come down as inflation increases the numbers who earn over student loan repayment thresholds. The changes in student loan terms that extend the period over which repayments are made should also reduce the cost per student, although these are already built into the existing forecasts.

Capping student numbers and reducing the eligibility of some courses for student loans are being explored as one way of cutting the cost of higher education. However, higher inflation also makes the cash freeze in the cap on university student tuition fees increasingly unsustainable, especially as there are limits on how much further universities can continue to recruit sufficient numbers of international students to make up for real-term cuts in funding for UK students.

The challenge for a government looking for economic growth is that the general consensus is that more not less investment in skills is needed. Investment is especially required in technical education at secondary level and in further education and training for adults. There is also a strong case for extending pre-school provision to support parents back into the workforce (in addition to its educational benefits). 

Potential savings in the short term are through pay restraint, in the medium term through school consolidation, and in the longer term as a function of a lower birth rate. Risks and challenges include the competitiveness of the UK economy.

Defence and security – £59bn or 5% of total spending

Defence and security spending in 2022/23 comprises £52bn on defence and armed forces, £5bn on the security services and counter-terrorism policing, and £2bn on war and armed forces pensions.

Over the last fifty years, successive governments have been able to ‘raid’ the defence budget to find money for the rising costs of pensions, health and social care. This is no longer possible given the UK’s commitment to NATO since 2006 to spend a minimum of 2% of national income on defence and security.

In practice, defence spending is expected to increase in the near-term to cover the effect of higher-than-forecast inflation and a weaker pound on the procurement budget, in addition to the costs of providing military aid to Ukraine. These cost pressures are likely to absorb the first stages of the commitment made by former Prime Minister Liz Truss to increase spending on defence and security to 3.0% of national income by 2030.

Pay restraint could help offset some of the rise in spending a little in the short-term but would be politically difficult to sustain over the medium- to long-term, especially if the armed forces continue to struggle to recruit the new soldiers, sailors and aircrew they need. Theoretical savings from better procurement are always discussed, but rarely achieved – at least not in aggregate as cost overruns tend to outweigh any cost savings realised.

There are unlikely to be any potential savings in defence spending. In an increasingly unstable global security situation, most risks primarily relate to not spending enough.

Transport – £47bn or 4% of total spending

Transport spending in 2022/23 is budgeted to comprise £25bn on the railways, £13bn on roads, £6bn on local transport and £3bn in other transport-related expenditures. This includes significant amounts of capital expenditure and is net of passenger fares.

Capital investment in transport infrastructure was a big component of the levelling-up agenda, with a 10% uplift in capital budgets in the 2021 Spending Review. Unfortunately, inflation in construction costs has more than offset this boost in spending, imposing a scaling back of levelling-up ambitions and the potential returns from economic growth unless the government decides to increase the budget to compensate.

Governments looking for spending cuts have often looked at the transport budget as it is relatively easy to defer or cancel capital programmes or cut back on road maintenance in order to achieve a particular financial outcome. With the train companies back in public ownership, cutting back on train services is also an option, as would raising fares on public transport by more than inflation later in the forecast period. 

Further reductions in the scope of HS2 and other rail investment programmes have been mooted as options to save money, or at the very least restrict the level of budget overruns that would otherwise require additional funding. 

The problem with cutting back on investment in transport is that it is one of the key levers available to government to unlock private sector investment and drive economic growth. There is also a risk to business confidence (and hence business investment) if the UK is not able to deliver major infrastructure programmes it has previously committed to.

Potential savings include pay restraint, cutting back on road maintenance, fewer train services, cutting back on road and rail investment programmes, and potentially cutting back or means testing free public transport provided to pensioners. Road charging and higher train fares are also options. Risks are the economic damage of continued industrial action and weaker economic growth, particularly in regional economies outside London and the South East.

Public order and safety – £43bn or 4% of total spending

Spending on public order and safety in 2022/23 is budgeted to comprise £23bn on policing, £8bn on the court system, £7bn on prisons, £3bn on fire and rescue services, and £2bn on border control. 

Cuts in spending on police, courts, prisons and fire services delivered over the past decade were in the context of falling crime and a preceding decade of rising pay and investment. The current context is very different, with crime rising, significant delays in the courts, severe prison overcrowding, and heightened concerns about fire safety since the Grenfell fire. 

The existing budget includes funding for reversing cuts in police numbers since 2010 but significant problems in the court system is likely to need additional funding. Police and prison staff recruitment challenges mean it will be difficult to restrain pay rises into the medium term.

Potential savings include pay restraint, cuts in planned police numbers, and greater use of technology. Risks include rising crime, failed prosecutions, issues with prison safety and the quality of rehabilitation, and underperforming emergency services.

Other public services – £161bn or 15% of total spending

Spending on ‘everything else’ goes across a large number of budget headings, including £30bn on industry and agriculture, £19bn on research and development, £12bn on international development and aid, £11bn on housing, £10bn on waste management, £9bn on the EU exit settlement (which will reduce significantly in future years), £8bn on culture, recreation and sport, £5bn on the BBC and Channel 4, and £2bn on foreign affairs among numerous other public services. These budget headings include most local public services outside of social care and transport, in addition to central government departments, the devolved administrations and around 500 other public bodies.

Despite a decade or so of ‘austerity’ spending restraint, there should be plenty of opportunity to find savings in many public services. Better use of technology could help improve services as well as enable them to be delivered at lower cost. However, delivering services at significantly lower cost typically requires the successful delivery of technology and restructuring programmes that carry significant financial and political risks, as well as requiring additional investment in the short-term. The more that is attempted, the higher the risk of overruns or failed attempts.

There are also significant opportunities to reduce losses incurred from fraud or waste, although this also requires investment in improving governance, processes, and financial controls at all levels of government.

Even where savings are achieved, the impact on overall government spending is limited – even if you could cut every single budget in this category by 5%, this would only reduce total spending by 0.75%.

Some budget headings are discretionary and so could in theory be reduced by much greater amounts, for example spending on research and development or funding for the arts. However, these types of spending tend to be important to delivering on other government objectives, such as fostering economic development, regenerating deprived communities, or supporting key industries such as tourism – in addition to being considered important activities in their own right.

There has been some discussion about cutting the size of the civil service, which at 510,000 is about 9% of the overall public sector workforce. Bringing total numbers down by 91,000 or 18% to the pre-Brexit position as mooted by some in government is likely to be extremely challenging to deliver in practice. Not only does the government need to deliver additional requirements such as for customs and border control, international trade negotiation, and other previously shared responsibilities that have reverted to the UK, but the events of the past few years have highlighted how government has struggled to deliver on its policy priorities. 

The three largest departmental workforces are the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) at 94,000, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) at 87,000 and HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) at 71,000. In theory, the automation of manual processes and the replacement of systems that currently require extensive manual intervention could enable cuts to be made in staff at all three departments, especially the DWP. However, the risks of making major systems changes, a court system under extreme pressure, and the risks to tax revenue of cutting staff significantly in the near-term, as well increased risks of fraud and error, makes this far from a cost-free choice.

There are also political difficulties in cutting non-staff areas of these budgets, such as agricultural subsidies where there are vocal constituencies likely to object to significant reductions in the amounts paid.

One budget heading that has already been cut is spending on international development, which is now set at 0.5% of national income, with a plan to return to the previous level of 0.7% of national income once the public finances are in better shape. Some members of the governing party have suggested reducing this below 0.5%, despite a manifesto commitment to keep to the 0.7% target. There have also been suggestions that the accounting goalposts could be moved to include existing domestic spending in the UK to be classified as international development, enabling the government to reduce the amount spent outside the UK.

Another area where costs are rising are public sector pensions, as former public servants are also living longer, with pensions-in-payment contractually linked to rises in the consumer prices index. Ironically, the switch in the last decade from final salary to average salary calculations reduces the effect that constraining public sector pay has on the eventual bill. Public sector pensions are relatively generous compared with the private sector and cutting the accrual rate for pension entitlements could save substantial amounts in the longer-term, assuming this could be successfully negotiated with the unions. This would allow for higher base salaries, which might help with recruitment given pensions benefits are often undervalued by recipients.

Potential savings again include pay restraint, cutting staff numbers, cutting public sector pension benefits, procurement savings, property consolidation (already underway), technology, cutting discretionary spending, greater use of outsourcing, cutting capital programmes including infrastructure. Risks include a further deterioration in the quality of public services, problems in delivering technology and transformation programmes, failure to achieve key government objectives that depend on effective public services, poor morale affecting the effective delivery of services, and the potential that any cuts in staff numbers will be reversed as governments make new commitments.

Interest – £104bn or 10%

The interest budget in 2022/23 comprises £83bn of debt interest and £21bn of other interest, principally on local authority and other funded public sector pensions. (No interest is recorded in the fiscal numbers on the much larger amount of unfunded pension obligations).

Public sector net debt has more than quadrupled over the last fifteen years from £0.5tn in 2008 to £2.4tn today, but ultra-low borrowing costs over that time has kept the cost of servicing that debt down to historically low levels.

The Debt Management Office within HM Treasury has been able to extend maturities to an average of around 15 years, locking in very low interest rates as it has raised or refinanced debt over the last decade. However, the Bank of England’s quantitative easing programme of gilt purchases has in effect swapped a substantial proportion of this fixed rate debt into variable rate central bank deposits, making the public finances much more sensitive to increases in official interest rates. The Debt Management Office has also been successful in hedging the low levels of inflation we have experienced over the last decade through the issue of bonds that rise in line with the retail prices index. However, this goes the other way in periods of higher inflation, with increasing liabilities on index-linked gilts offsetting the inflationary benefit of a faster growing denominator on the debt to GDP ratio.

The IFS expects debt interest to increase by £23bn to £106bn in the current financial year, primarily as a consequence of higher interest rates and higher inflation on index-linked debt. Even with inflation coming down in the next year or two, it still expects debt interest in 2026/67 to be £106bn, more than double the £51bn forecast by the OBR in March.

The two main levers for restricting rises in the debt interest bill are to keep borrowing down, which implies higher taxes or lower spending compared with the current path and to keep interest rates at the lowest level possible by regaining credibility with the markets, which also implies higher taxes or lower spending. Some commentators have estimated the benefit of the change in Prime Minister as being between £6bn and £12bn in lower annual interest charges than they might otherwise have been the case.

Some commentators have suggested that the Bank of England could implement non-interest paying tiered reserves, in effect arbitrarily ceasing or reducing the base rate payable on a proportion of deposits held by (mostly UK) banks and financial institutions. This would reduce the cost of borrowing on that element of the public debt, but one risk is that the overall interest bill might end up being higher depending on how banks and debt markets responded to such a significant change in monetary policy.

One ‘creative accounting’ approach would be to change the debt measure in the debt to GDP ratio used in fiscal targets. This was amended a few years ago to exclude the rising amounts of debt being taken on by the Bank of England to fund quantitative easing and Term Funding Scheme low-cost loans for high-street banks. Reverting to the headline measure for public sector net debt would contribute to the debt to GDP ratio falling as quantitative easing is unwound and Term Funding Scheme loans are repaid.

Potential savings – none compared with current plans, absent the more radical suggestion of tiered reserves. However, the extent of the cost increase can be limited through improved fiscal credibility and constraining the amount of borrowing.

Other options

More radical options are possible, but these are likely to be extremely difficult without substantial political support from the public, such as that provided by a general election mandate.

For example, privatisation could move responsibility for some taxpayer funded services that are currently provided by public bodies to the private sector. The challenge here is that some public subsidy may still be needed even after privatisation, reducing the amount of any saving to the taxpayer. This would likely increase the burden on those of working age who would have to pay to use any service that was privatised, while still paying through their taxes for pensioners, children and the less well-off to use that service. There is also a risk that the overall cost to the public is higher, given that the bulk purchasing effect of procuring services collectively could be lost depending on the business model chosen.

Historical precedence is not helpful here, in particular the privatisation of the railways in Great Britain in 1996. This ended up being renationalised unintentionally following track-owner Railtrack’s collapse in 2002 and the failure of the train operating company franchise system in 2020. Trying again would be a ‘brave’ choice politically even if it might be possible to reduce the level of public subsidy required with a different financial model.

Other radical options include ending the provision of some public services or scaling them back significantly, but in most cases the political backlash could be significant in comparison with the level of savings that might be possible.

Long-term reform

One of the reasons the UK is in a difficult fiscal situation is the short-term focus of successive governments that have continued to add to the nation’s financial commitments without setting aside funding to pay for them. This has made the public finances increasingly less resilient to face economic shocks such as that seen in the financial crisis a decade and a half ago, the pandemic over the past two and a half years, and the cost-of-living crisis that we are currently going through.

While finding savings in the short-term is likely to be extremely difficult, over a long period there are more options to reduce the cost of the state. A good example is social care, where it might be possible to establish long-term insurance arrangements for those currently in their 20s and 30s that would eventually – in 40 to 50 years’ time – significantly reduce the level of public funding required. Similarly, the state pension could be replaced for those now entering the workforce by collective defined contribution pension funds such as those seen in other countries.

For example, Australia has strengthened its public finances significantly with reforms such as replacing unfunded defined benefit pension schemes for federal employees with defined contribution pension funds, and the establishment of a sovereign wealth fund to support the payment of pensions and welfare benefits.

Conclusion

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt have a difficult task in trying to reduce the gap between receipts and expenditure. Politically it will be difficult to raise taxes, but there will also be political, financial and operational consequences and risks in how they choose to cut spending. And with an increased focus by the markets on the credibility of their plans, there will be less room to pencil in optimistic ‘anticipated’ savings into the later years of the five-year forecast period.

The first challenge they face will be in how to reengineer the energy support schemes for both households and businesses from April 2023 onwards. As these are time limited, this won’t help bridge the gap in later years, but it will enable them to be more targeted in how support is provided over the next couple of years, as well as potentially reducing the overall cost that needs to be funded by long-term borrowing.

Each of the main options for cutting spending in the medium-term are unpalatable and politically challenging:

  • Real-terms cuts in pensions and welfare are possible but difficult to deliver politically during a cost-of-living crisis, as previous Prime Minister Liz Truss discovered when she was forced to deny she was planning to abandon the triple-lock mechanism. 
  • Real-terms cuts in public sector pay are likely but come with the prospect of much greater disruption from industrial action and increasing difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff. 
  • Cutting investment in infrastructure and capital programmes is the easiest option to achieve but comes with risks to future economic growth and business investment.
  • Greater efficiency is possible but practically difficult to deliver, with significant project delivery risks and the need for sufficient capital investment to be successful.
  • Higher fees and charges are possible but risk a political backlash.
  • Lowering public service outputs or quality is possible but there are practical limits to how far you can continue to cut funding for many public services without adverse effects.

Over the last fifteen years, successive governments have been able to borrow their way out of trouble even as debt has mounted, and the resilience of the public finances has weakened. That era is no more, with providers of finance to the UK Government now asking much more challenging questions about how the government can pay its way.

Tough choices will need to be made.

Martin Wheatcroft FCA is a strategy consultant, adviser on public finances, and the author of Simply UK Government Finances 2022/23.

This article was originally published by ICAEW.