Tory austerity ‘has cost UK half a trillion pounds of public spending since 2010’
Thinktank says 2010-2019 spending would have been £540bn higher had previous plans been stuck to

Larry Elliott Economics editor
Fri 3 Mar 2023 10.37 GMT
A decade of austerity by the Conservative-led governments after 2010 resulted in more than half a trillion pounds of lost public spending and a weaker economy, a left-of-centre thinktank has calculated.

The Progressive Economy Forum said that had state spending continued at the pace before David Cameron became prime minister, it would have been £91bn higher by 2019 – enough to cover the entire education budget in that year.

A report by the thinktank says over the 2010-2019 period as a whole public spending would have been £540bn higher had previous plans been stuck to.

Cameron and his chancellor, George Osborne, said there was no alternative to government belt-tightening after the UK’s budget deficit rose to a then record high as a result of the global financial crisis of 2007-09.