Lack Of Transparency From Parties Over Incoming Cuts Is "Frustrating" Says Top Economist

Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), has told PoliticsHome the lack of transparency over planned cuts to public services after the election by both Labour and the Conservatives is "frustrating".

Labour has commited to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt's pledge to get debt falling as a percentage of GDP by the end of the next parliament, which includes capping capital spending for unprotected departments - such as justice or local councils - at one per cent.

Protected departments - such as the NHS and defence - however, will receive more investment, with economists warning it will come at the expense of the budgets of other unprotected ones. 

Despite this, neither political party has addressed the looming cuts in detail - with both Labour leader Keir Starmer and Conservative leader Rishi Sunak appearing to sidestep the question at Tuesday night's leaders' debate on ITV. 

When asked if either of them would "rule out" cuts of up to four per cent a year to unprotected departments as a result of committing to fiscal rules, Sunak said the government would "continue investing record sums in public services"; Starmer responded by saying "we're not going to go back to austerity". 

However, the director of the IFS has told PoliticsHome it is a "matter of arithmetic" that public services are facing cuts under the government's fiscal rules, which Labour has signed up to. 

"[Hunt] said that day to day, public service spending will rise one per cent a year for the next five years," Johnson told PoliticsHome on Wednesday. 

"Now at first glance that doesn't look so bad, but when you know that defence spending will rise faster than that because they're both committed to that; and you knew that health spending will rise