Britain has an entitlement problem

An Institute for Fiscal Studies paper, published at the end of last month, makes grim reading. Through the prism of the media reports it generated (‘One in 11 workers in England could be NHS staff by 2036,’ said the Guardian; ‘NHS staff will make up 49 per cent of the public sector workforce in 2036,’ said the Times), the most sensational finding was that our health service will be eating up an ever-increasing share of public spending. But, as so often, this particular cuckoo in the nest of public provision is only the most newsworthy of so many indications of Britain’s long, slow slide into insolvency.

The paper is part of the Institute’s series Green Budget 2023. A week earlier its report ‘Tax and public finances: the fundamentals’ began with a sentence that says it all: ‘The big-picture choices over how much to tax and spend will be difficult in large part because of poor economic growth and growing spending pressures.’