Economist @TheIFS. Views my own.
- Tweets 331
- Following 176
- Followers 458
- Likes 301
ALT Quote from IFS Head of Devolved and Local Government Finance David Phillips: "Voters, already unhappy after years of only slow economic growth, a rising cost of living, and public services that have failed to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, may not warm to a dose of cold, hard fiscal reality. But the next Welsh Government will have to face up to it. And as the current UK government has found out, not preparing the public for difficult choices prior to an election can come back to bite you politically when the electoral dust has settled."
ALT Quote from IFS Head of Devolved and Local Government Finance David Phillips: "In a pattern familiar by now from several other manifestos in the devolved elections, the SNP manifesto pledges additional spending – costing an estimated £1.4 billion a year by 2031–32 – without credibly saying how it would pay for this. A large proportion is from assumed efficiencies – on top of the substantial savings already assumed in existing Scottish Government spending plans. More likely in reality, paying for these plans would require further tax rises or deeper cuts to lower-priority spending."
ALT Quote from IFS Head of Devolved and Local Government Finance David Phillips: "From a purely fiscal perspective, it is welcome to see a party that plans substantial spending increases combine it with a recognition that this would need higher revenues too. While the manifesto omits specific revenue estimates, the proposals set out seem unlikely to raise enough revenue to fund all the additional spending that would be required to deliver the Scottish Greens’ plans. To pay for those, increases in taxes would probably have to be even larger than suggested, or cuts made to other day-to-day spending that the Scottish Greens deem lower priority."
ALT Taking the entire package of measures together, this may be a costed plan on paper but whether it would survive contact with reality is far from clear. Scotland can have lower taxes and higher spending on some services – but giveaways on the scale proposed by the Scottish Conservatives cannot credibly be funded largely through back-office and administrative savings. In addition to the cuts to benefits set out in the manifesto, there would likely need to be substantial cutbacks to either the range or quality of some services used by households and businesses too.
ALT Quote from IFS Head of Devolved and Local Government Finance David Phillips: "Taken together, these proposals would represent a substantial expansion of the size and role of the state in Wales. This is a legitimate goal (as is a reduction in the size and role of the state, as others may prefer). The Green Party manifesto does not say how it would pay for this bigger, more active state. In the context of a Welsh budget already under significant strain, paying for these new entitlements would require either substantial tax rises or significant cuts to other areas of Welsh Government spending."
ALT Quote from IFS Head of Devolved and Local Government Finance David Phillips: "The combination of big tax cuts and implied benefit increases without any identified source of funding is not fiscally credible. And the analysis of the potential revenue effects of the headline income tax cuts is unserious at best. In particular, the idea the tax cuts are self funding is a mirage created by a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the current devolution settlement and incorrectly comparing cumulative and annual figures on the potential impacts of the cuts."
