Is George Osborne planning to cut investment spending?

Posted on October 30 2015

The Treasury issued a very breathy press release overnight saying that:

Infrastructure at heart of Spending Review as Chancellor launches National Infrastructure Commission

And:

In his statement, he will pledge £100 billion in infrastructure spending by 2020 — including full funding for the £15 billion Roads Investment Strategy.

What the release does not say is that this may be a cut in real spending plans. According to the July 2015 OBR forecasts planned investment spending for the next five years was:

So why the reduction now?

At the very least a little more detail on all such numbers would seem to be needed.

Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:

There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.

You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.

And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:

2 Responses

A.P.B. says:

October 30 2015 at 9:34 am

Same pattern as last electoral cycle. Small-ish cuts followed by relatively small-ish expansion ahead of 2020 election = political game playing. Worked last time, so he’s trying to repeat the trick. With Osborne its always about the potential political capital. The evidence suggests he knows very little economics and cares even less about it. Cutting infrastructure/ investment – when interest rates and borrowing costs are this low, is exactly the opposite of what any economist of pretty much every stripe would tell you to do.
- Richard Murphy says:
  
  October 30 2015 at 9:53 am
  
  The austerity is in the structure of the cuts