How comparable are the costings in the party manifestos?
Following the launch of the Conservative manifesto, journalists pointed out the big difference between the levels of increased current (day-to-day) spending promised by the three main parties.
It’s important to note that the manifestos (in general) do not include spending that will increase in the future but has already been announced. The costings for the Conservative manifesto only include new spending announcements made since the election was called.
For example, the Conservative manifesto spending list doesn’t include its already-announced pledges to:
- Increase school funding in England, worth £4.3 billion per year by 2022/23 (the Conservatives wrongly give a higher figure by ignoring inflation and adding up multiple years.)
- Increase spending on the NHS averaging £20.5 billion per year (again the Conservatives use a higher figure which ignores inflation).
- Recruit more police officers at a cost of £1 billion from 2019 to 2020.
So while the Conservatives plan to increase annual current spending by £3 billion compared to what’s already been announced, overall they plan to spend a lot more than £3 billion extra per year than we spend today.
It’s not clear to what extent the other parties would continue all of the previous spending commitments made by the government.
Since the Labour party manifesto was launched, they have also announced a major spending commitment on women’s pensions which was not mentioned in the manifesto.