A friend of mine, Dr Mark Pack of London, has done some interesting research on how the coalition government's spending plans compare with Labour's.
Mark writes:
"I’ve been looking through some of the detailed figures on how the government’s plans for cutting public spending compare to what Labour was planning. There’s no doubt the cuts involve many very hard choices for people trying to deliver good quality public services, but two figures have surprised me.
One is that by 2015 the public sector is still set to employ 200,000 more people than it did in 1997.
The other is that outside of welfare and benefit changes, the government is actually planning to be spending £2 billion per year more on public services than Labour was. You wouldn’t guess from Labour’s apparent opposition to each and every cut that outside welfare and benefit changes, Labour was actually planning to spend even less!"
