Nick Ridpath
Research Economist at the IFS
- Reposted by Nick RidpathThere is an increasing sense that the UK's approach towards fiscal policymaking, and in particular the excessive focus on "headroom", isn't delivering good outcomes. Come along on 19 February to hear me make the case for how we could do things differently, and to hear from our terrific panel.
- New ONS public finance figures for December show borrowing from April to December was below 2024, in line with forecasts. This is good news, but under the hood there's little sign of a pickup in revenues from inflation - an important thing to watch out for going forward. (1/4)
- New ONS public finance data today shows central government revenues are still lagging significantly below March expectations. Given inflation has been higher than forecast, this is surprising - even VAT receipts, which one might expect to rise with inflation, are below forecast
- This is important as last month's OBR forecast (no monthly breakdown of this yet) expects a big increase in receipts by 2029/30 from higher inflation, boosting the public finances. That may materialise, but it’s concerning that it hasn’t yet - one watch out for in the new year
- Key thing about the OBR's downgrade then upgrade to revenues: much of it is from inflation and wage growth this year boosting tax take. While inflation and wage growth are up, we're yet to see any increase in tax revenue in recent public finance data. The government will hope it materialises soon.
- Reposted by Nick RidpathUnderrated part of yesterday's Budget was what's happening to public service spending in 2028-29. Spending Review settlements reopened just 5 months after the SR to account for loosely-specified 'efficiency savings' of £1.4bn in 28-29 (rising to 4bn in 29-30)
- Some early takeaways on the public finances from us @theifs.bsky.social. Really interesting thing to me is that the much-anticipated productivity downgrade didn't end up creating that big an increase in forecast borrowing. This means the policies we've seen today have grown headroom substantially.
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- With a fiscal “groundhog day” of discussions about how the Chancellor could keep meeting her fiscal rules for the second time this year, we were wondering: what are the chances we could be doing all this again in Spring? The answer: pretty high. Particularly nerdy thread:
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- Our new Sure Start overview report out today includes a cost-benefit analysis. These estimates are uncertain (many of the likely benefits haven’t happened yet!) but suggest Sure Start may go 90% of the way to ‘paying for itself’, with additional long-run benefits for children as they grow up
- Reposted by Nick RidpathWe've built a new IFS tool which can be used to explore what the government spends money on, and where in the UK benefits from that spending. Here it is: ifs.org.uk/calculators/.... Short thread on what you can do with the tool:
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