The IFS’s analysis on yesterday’s budget was interrupted by the sound of footsteps as several journalists rushed outside to break the news on NHS spending.
Minutes earlier Gemma Tetlow, an IFS Senior Research Economist, had revealed how the increase in NHS spending will be so small the figure rounds to zero, and could fall below zero if inflation rises, breaking the Conservative’s policy pledge.
However, what these journalists who took an early-exit did not hear was both Tetlow and IFS Director Paul Johnson’s insistence that there will be a rise in NHS spending over the next four years.
Tetlow responded to journalists’ suggestions that the baseline had been deliberately changed to allow the government to claim there would be a real term increase by denying this was the case.
The same baseline will be used to calculate spending in all government departments. Furthermore, the baseline was always set to change as it was based on temporary factors.
Tetlow also pointed out that the Conservatives could announce an increase in NHS spending, which if today’s reaction is anything to go by, looks likely to happen.
According to Johnson, health has done much better than any other part of public spending, and “much more will be spent in 2015 than in 2010.”
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