Nobody’s perfect, are they? The IFS found something to criticise today for all the parties — the Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems and SNP — whose tax and spending plans it has examined.
The main charges are of leaving questions about spending and borrowing unanswered: The Conservatives ‘have not been completely explicit about exactly what level of borrowing they would want to achieve’ and nor have the SNP, Labour has ‘provided disappointingly little information on what they would borrow’. There’s a gold star for the back of the Lib Dems’ exercise book: they have been ‘more transparent’ about their fiscal plans than other parties, but they get a rap on the knuckles too for saying that ‘largely unspecified’ anti-tax avoidance and evasion measures (it’s the new ‘cracking down on waste and inefficiency’) would contribute to closing the deficit. What else did we learn?
1. We know very little about Labour’s borrowing plans
They’ll balance the cyclically-adjusted current budget – but they won’t say when.
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