Austerity

Hammond's Spring Statement suggested that austerity measures could be reduced in the Autumn Budget of that year. However, according to the Resolution Foundation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies IFS , the OBR's forecasts for borrowing and debt were based on the assumption that the government continued with the planned spending reductions that were announced after the general election.

The deficit in the first quarter of the —19 financial year was lower than at any time since [27] and by August it had reached the lowest level since —3. Hammond's aim at this time was to eliminate the deficit entirely by the mids. The Resolution Foundation described the step as a "significant easing of austerity". The austerity programme included reductions in welfare spending, the cancellation of school building programs, reductions in local government funding, and an increase in VAT.

A number of independent reports have considered the demographic effects of the austerity programme. In , activist collective Feminist Fightback described its gendered impact [36] and in the Fawcett Society published a report which was critical of the Treasury for not assessing the impact of austerity on women's equality. In the same year a group of political scientists at the University of Nottingham found that the impact of austerity on in-work benefits and housing policy had been harmful to working families with children, while wealthy pensioners and older homeowners had benefited.

This was due to the fact that black and Asian women were more likely to be employed in the public sector, be in low-paid jobs and insecure work, and experience higher levels of unemployment than other groups. Research published in by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation identified an increase in child poverty and pensioner poverty compared to the previous year, following significant overall decreases during the previous 20 years.

Reductions in benefit support and a shortage of affordable housing were considered to be contributing factors. Researchers have linked budget cuts and sanctions against benefit claimants to increasing use of food banks. A study published in the British Medical Journal in found that each one percentage point increase in the rate of Jobseeker's Allowance claimants sanctioned was associated with a 0.

The benefit cap , introduced via the Welfare Reform Act , set a maximum level for the amount of state welfare benefits that could be paid to an individual household in any one year. A Local Housing Allowance LHA policy restricting Housing Benefit for private sector tenants to cover a maximum number of rooms had been in place since From April the LHA rates used to calculate maximum housing benefit levels for private sector tenants were frozen for four years. The degree of shortfall depends on dwelling, location and individual circumstances, but Shelter expected that by the shortfall could in some cases reach hundreds of pounds a month.

In April , housing benefit payments were ended for new claims made by people aged 18— According to Shelter, since all forms of homelessness have increased. The number of households living in temporary accommodation has risen to more than , this includes families who were holding down jobs but had nowhere stable to live.

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This can be directly attributed to austerity as there have been a combination of higher rents, ongoing freeze on housing benefits and a lack or social homes. The government needs to build thousands more homes that are affordable to families but due to the policy of austerity this won't be possible. During the period of austerity, the rate of homelessness has rapidly increased. By the number of families living in bed and breakfast accommodation was almost 50,, and there were many more "hidden homeless" people living on the floors and sofas of friends and acquaintances.

An article in The BMJ regarded this as a "neon sign that something is fundamentally wrong" with how society is being run, noting that "homeless women die on average at 43 and homeless men at 47, compared with 77 for the rest of us". During the period of austerity there have been reductions in UK Government funding for county councils in England.

This has combined with an increasing demand for social care services to cause reductions in expenditure on other services such as public libraries , refuse collection , road maintenance and Sure Start , along with increases to council tax rates and the introduction of additional charges for county council services. Rob Whiteman of CIPFA commented that "this scale of job losses reflects the intense financial pressure on councils as they now have no option other than to provide the bare minimum statutory provisions".

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Research by the University of Cambridge published in said that the greatest reductions in local authority spending had occurred in impoverished post-industrial cities in the north of England and some poor Inner London boroughs. In contrast councils in wealthier areas had made smaller reductions. In Northamptonshire County Council become insolvent and proposed reducing services to the minimum required by law. Austerity measures were blamed for the insolvency, as was the council's refusal to raise council tax despite the rising costs of providing social services.

At the time the National Audit Office said that up to 15 other local authorities were also at risk of insolvency. In , figures analysed by the King's Fund think tank showed that "mental health trusts in England are still having their budgets cut, despite government assurances they would be funded on a par with physical healthcare". A report published by Psychologists for Social Change indicates that austerity has contributed significantly to the incidence and level of depression and other mental health conditions within the population.

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In an article published showed how mental health problems can be attributed to a persons financial situation. In , the Royal Society of Medicine said that government austerity decisions in health and social care were likely to have resulted in 30, deaths in England and Wales in It found that annual growth in health funding during the s was 3.

Annual growth in social care funding of 2. This coincided with mortality rates decreasing by 0. The rate of increase in life expectancy in England nearly halved between and , according to research by epidemiology professor Michael Marmot. He commented that it was "entirely possible" that austerity was the cause [71] and said: A paper released by the British Medical Journal in November estimated that the government austerity programme caused around , excess deaths since Public Health England was asked to carry out a review of life expectancy trends but government ministers said that the arguments put forward by some academics, that austerity had contributed to the change, could not be proved.

There are approximately five million public sector workers in the UK.

A Labour Party amendment to the Queen's Speech proposing the removal of the cap was defeated. The policy of suspending the social security payments of unemployed claimants who were judged not to be adequately seeking work was continued, and the frequency and severity of the sanctions was increased. The value of the State Pension has not been subject to austerity measures, being increased each year since by a minimum of 2. The decision to equalise the State Pension ages of men and women was made by the government in From the women's State Pension age was steadily raised from 60 with the aim of matching that of men at 65 by An additional increase to 66 for both sexes is intended to be implemented by A rise in the State Pension age to 67 for both sexes in had been proposed by Gordon Brown in the s, followed by a rise to 68 in Reductions in public expenditure in Northern Ireland have often been described as not as harsh as those for the UK as a whole.

This is primarily due to the fact that the UK government has not been able to exert direct control over welfare expenditure in Northern Ireland, because welfare policy is a devolved matter for the Northern Ireland Assembly. During the early years of the austerity programme, many economists argued that the financial changes of the austerity programme should not be undertaken as extensively and as quickly as was done.

Osborne, however, argued that without the implementation of the programme in the way that it was another financial crisis was likely. The rationale behind the need for achieving a balanced budget in the financial climate following the Great Recession has been questioned by some Keynesian economists. Andrew Gamble writing in Parliamentary Affairs in commented: Most macroeconomists now agree that the austerity programme pursued by the Coalition Government in its first two years was both too severe and unnecessary and set back the economic recovery which was underway in the first half of Instead of focussing on the long-term structural causes of increases in public expenditure, the current government have adopted glib and uninformed targets for reductions in overall expenditure.

Rather than tackling a housing crisis or low pay they have introduced measures like the benefit cap and the bedroom tax. Ben Chu, economics editor of The Independent newspaper, commented that: Economists Alberto Alesina , Carlo A. The authors commented that the UK government austerity programme had resulted in growth that was higher than the European average and that the UK's economic performance had been much stronger than the International Monetary Fund had predicted.

The United Nations carried out an investigation in led by Philip Alston , the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, into the effect of austerity policies in the UK. Peter Dominiczak political editor at The Daily Telegraph wrote that because spending on the NHS and foreign aid is ring-fenced, "other Whitehall departments will face savage cuts to their budgets".

The general election was contested by a Labour Party and a Conservative Party which had both committed themselves to austerity policies. Labour's then- Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling predicted that "two parliaments of pain" would be necessary to address the UK's budget deficit. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that Labour's plans implied a cumulative decline of The IFS also said that there appeared to be only a modest difference between the plans put forward by the two main political parties. At the end of the first full parliament under the austerity programme, the Labour Party and the Conservatives were deadlocked in the polls.

The Labour Party's manifesto proposed the less rigorous objective of reducing the budget deficit every year with the aim of seeing debt as a share of GDP falling by and achieving a budget surplus "as soon as possible". This would render the spending reductions proposed by the Conservatives unnecessary, according to some analyses. The general election was held almost three years earlier than scheduled under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act in an attempt to increase the Government's majority to facilitate the Brexit process.

The Conservative Party manifesto pledged to eliminate the deficit by the "middle of the next decade", [] an aim which the Institute for Fiscal Studies IFS said would "likely require more spending cuts or tax rises even beyond the end of the next parliament". A Labour spokesman said: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the austerity programme in the 21st century. Your contribution may be further edited by our staff, and its publication is subject to our final approval.

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Dec 6, See Article History. Learn More in these related Britannica articles: Taxation , imposition of compulsory levies on individuals or entities by governments. Taxes are levied in almost every country of the world, primarily to raise revenue for government expenditures, although they serve other purposes as well. This article is concerned with taxation in general, its principles, its objectives, and its effects; specifically,….

Government budget , forecast by a government of its expenditures and revenues for a specific period of time. In national finance, the period covered by a budget is usually a year, known as a financial or fiscal year, which may or may not correspond with the calendar year.

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The word budget …. Deficit financing , practice in which a government spends more money than it receives as revenue, the difference being made up by borrowing or minting new funds. Although budget deficits may occur for numerous reasons, the term usually refers to a conscious attempt to stimulate the economy by lowering tax rates….

Credit , transaction between two parties in which one the creditor or lender supplies money, goods, services, or securities in return for a promised future payment by the other the debtor or borrower. Such transactions normally include the payment of interest to the lender. Credit may be extended by public or…. International Monetary Fund IMF , United Nations UN specialized agency, founded at the Bretton Woods Conference in to secure international monetary cooperation, to stabilize currency exchange rates, and to expand international liquidity access to hard currencies.

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