June budget: did the Tories over-promise?

Couple of quick points that occur as you look through the budget red book. The 80/20 breakdown of state spending cuts versus tax rises is actually, on average, over the five-year Parliament, more like a 66.8 per cent/32.2 per cent split (see table 1.1 on p 15 – averaging the bottom line totals).

Not surprising perhaps but suggesting that the Tories over-promised a bit in the election.

You get to an 80/20 split at the end of the five-year parliament but that is not the whole story of the full exercise.

Colleagues are pointing out that the much trumpeted distributional charts by the Treasury (Chart A1, p 66 and A2 p 67) actually only go up to 2012-13 but only £4.7b of the £11b welfare cuts/reforms have come into effect by that date… (see table 2.1, p40).

One other number crunch that leaps out from the tables is helpfully provided by the OBR. If you’re wondering how your benefits being linked to CPI rather than RPI might work, the Treasury says historically CPI is only 0.5 per cent less but you’ll see from Alan Budd’s projections that he thinks over the next few years (Table C2 p. 84) it’ll be more like an average of 1.34 per cent lower.

– Related: Now we know how bad the pain ahead will be