I've just got round, slightly belatedly, to the Comprehensive Spending
Review at http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/pbr_csr/pbr_csr07_index.cfm <http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/pbr_csr/pbr_csr07_index.cfm> Perhaps
it's just because I'm losing grey cells at a rate of knots, but I have the
feeling that the presentation of these stats is getting harder to make sense
of year by year. I was puzzled by the press reports last week which said
that DWP expenditure was set to fall by over 5% per year. That looked
highly implausible to me, so I went to check it. Looking at the public
expenditure figures and departmental reports, only 7.7 billion is identified
as in the CSR's overview as DWP expenditure, and the reported fall is in that
figure. Social Security Benefits are now buried in the public finance
tables (Annex B. table B.11), and are set to rise from the current 131 billion by over 27 billion. In
other words, I've been playing hunt the thimble in the hope of locating the largest single
element in public expenditure. Is it just me?
Paul Spicker
Professor of Public Policy
Centre for Public Policy and Management
The Robert Gordon University
Garthdee Road
Aberdeen AB10 7QE
Scotland
Tel: +44 1224263120
Fax: + 44 1224263434
Website: http://www.rgu.ac.uk/publicpolicy/ <http://www.rgu.ac.uk/publicpolicy/>
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