Black hole ‘likely larger than £22bn’ – as ministers pushed to scrap projects immediately

https://news.sky.com/story/black-hole-likely-larger-than-16322bn-as-ministers-pushed-to-scrap-projects-immediately-13208937

by JimJonesdrinkkoolaid

47 comments

  1. The hell is going on here? This is criminal incompetence. There need to be charges.

    >”The previous government covered up the true state of the public finances”

    Ms Reeves said this. Either it’s true, in which case, prosecute, or it isn’t, in which case she’s lying.

  2. >She promptly cancelled several projects, including 40 new hospitals, reforms to adult social care charges, a new Advanced British Standard qualification, and several road and train projects

    Maybe we can solve the energy crisis by tapping the power generated from Clement Attlee and Nye Bevan spinning in their graves.

  3. Why don’t they just borrow money, that’s what governments do. Borrow money to invest in the country, hopefully the returns will be enough to pay it back. When we are 2trillion in debt another 20 billion is peanuts. How the fuck does she think we are going to get any growth if they keep destroying everything.

  4. In the grand scheme of things, 22bn doesn’t seem like all that much. 3-400 per head. ‘Black hole’ is a tad dramatic. Just borrow the damn money (print it up – Lettuce Truss shot a load worth 30bn in a couple of weeks) and stop chewing the scenery.

  6. Make all foreign nationals living in the uk pay health insurance, it will take about 10 million people out of the of the NHS, which will be worth a couple of £billion!

    Stopped giving social housing And more importantly benefits to non-new UK citizens! This will relieve another couple of £billion.

    Stop paying to put illegal migrants in hotels, cancel HS2, stop giving billions of pounds worth of foreign aid to extremely wealthy countries!

    Cancel net zero because the UK is 1% of global emissions, instead of putting the handbrakes the UK economy, we could take it off and let it grow!

    The list could go on and on UK government waste so much money on so many stupid things is obscene!

  7. ‘But speaking on the Politics with Jack and Sam podcast today, Sky News’ deputy political editor Sam Coates said: “One of the things I’m told is that the overall black hole could be bigger than £22bn, because don’t forget, £20bn is just the gap in this financial year alone.”’

    Well that seems credible. Nice to see nobody overreacted on here without reading it *could be bigger* according to a sky news random.

  8. The year is 3034. The United Kingdom has been in perpetual austerity for over a millennium. Euston’s HS2 rebuild is almost finished after being cut to one platform.

  9. Press briefing for even more austerity, since the previous briefings didn’t get any push back.

    If this keeps up, it’ll be one-and-done for Labour under Starmer.

    And remember – a dead donkey could *probably* have got elected against the Tories in this election, especially with Reform having taken ~15% of the Tory vote nationally.

  10. It makes me wonder what tories were planning to if they continued in office. Just BAU and kick can down the road. ?

  12. This is such horseshit.

    22 billion is only 10% of what non-structural tax reliefs cost in a year. Most of those reliefs are absolute bullshit (not all, some are actually quite good growth measures).

    The money is there. Labour just lack the political will to access it.

  13. So the decline will continue?

    Got enough money to send £12bn overseas each and every year, £60bn over the parliament

    Got enough money to give already wealthy public sector workers a bumper pay rise, despite most being on 30k/40k/60k+ already, by stealing the money from pensioners, including the really poor who don’t qualify for Credits

    Got enough money to spend £5bn on illegal immigrants, £30bn per parliament

    But haven’t got any money to prevent the country becoming even more shit?

    F politicians!!!

  14. This is the same mistake that the Tories made with austerity. Even the USA used economic stimulus to get the economy moving after the 2008 financial crisis. If people can’t get to work or to the shops, etc, they can’t spend money.

    The only way to have a healthy economy is to have a healthy workforce where people can get where they need to go and where they have money to spend after paying rent/mortgage.

    I live in the centre of a major “wealthy” city where over half of the shops are shut. People can’t get into the city to spend money on a broken bus service and expensive and unreliable train system. Businesses and individuals can’t afford rent. And we’re not educating enough people, so are still sending our own kids into dead-end hospitality and retail jobs while having to steal professionals from other countries’ taxpayers. Except that we can’t even get enough of those anymore because of Brexit. Good companies are also fleeing to the continent because of these problems and Brexit.

    More austerity is not the answer.

  15. Before making knee jerk reactions , I recommend listening to the latest More or Less podcast which generally looks into statistics in the national media with experts – and in this case examines the £22 billion gap.

    It’s pretty objective , I think.

    It may have been obvious that the Tories were being ‘economical with the truth’ in their budget forecasts, and some of the ares but not necessarily by exactly how much.

    I’m not sure I think Labour could have been expected to run an election campaign based on ‘the budget is generally dishonest so we will be specifically raising this and that / cutting this and that’ in the light of the Conservatives just denying it and using their version of project fear.

    There’s also a difficult balance now between austerity blocking needed growth and causing more problems than it solves …. versus promising unfunded spending and more borrowing when you are dependent on international market opinion.

    I do fear where we end up if the new government gives no sense of hope , no sustainable private sector growth ( beyond more building) or progress in rescuing the public sector form slow collapse. We need innovative yet effective changes – I don’t know what they should be but ‘more of the same’ seems likely to get us nowhere , worsen public disillusionment and increase support for the extremes.

  16. New governments always do this, they want to get rid of any crappy projects from the other lot, and put their own projects in place, which will likely be next year budget.

  17. Is they can announce in a year or so that all these cuts have worked and the black hole has been filled and we can exit austerity then I’m more than onboard. Only problem is that will not happen

  18. Labour are a fucking mess. They are basically David Cameron Tory’s. When this doesn’t work in 15 years time what will we do then?

  19. Hey baby, I’m looking for someone to fill my Fiscal Hole…got any hard currency?

  21. There is enough wealth and money in Britain.

    £22 billion is not a lot in the grand scheme of things.

    Let’s have a one off wealth tax to plug the black hole . This should be taken from the very wealthy.

  22. Why not stop paying to house migrants in hotels and instead build large camps with temporary shelters, then reduce aid massively, and means test as many benefits as possible. We could also prevent appeals on asylum decisions.

    There’s lots that can be done! We just need to grow a pair and decide who loses in society instead of ordinary people like it normally is

  23. Can’t help thinking a lot of this is being exaggerated to try to lessen the blow when they fuck everyone over with tax increases in the budget.

  24. Surely if they clawed back the fraudulently obtained test and track money it would cover it?

  25. So where the fuck have all our taxes been going ? Because they’ve built fuck all

  26. People are going to need to stop relying on big government and start fostering community action. A tall order when years of austerity have pushed us further from our local communities than ever. 

  27. Capital investments pays for itself.

    Do they not understand the basics of growth? Despite claiming to be a ‘pro growth’ govt. useless twats

  28. Absolutely disgraceful from the Tories. We endured 14 years of austerity, supposedly to ‘balance the books’ after an allegedly irresponsible Labour government, only to find that there’s *still* no money.

    That being said, it’s *incredibly* short-sighted to be scrapping infrastructure projects that could kick-start growth and therefore add to tax receipts.

  29. Fucking hell, £20bn per year?! Honestly I feel like we should seize the assets of all cabinet ministers from the 2010 election onwards. It probably won’t even fill one year in that hole but it would make me feel slightly better.

  30. In the meantime we’ve canned drilling more oil, so we’ll buy it from the Qataris and Norwegians to fund thier nation’s instead.

    Why not let Shell and BP drill the fuck out of the North Sea and tax that to recover it..

    How about stop paying aid to counties with better and faster growing economies than us.

    We still give aid to Afghanistan.. we are planning on 151m alone in 2024 literally to the Taliban… Who in turn are sending refugees to us..

  31. Sounds like some people need to be put in jail, 22bn isn’t exactly change.

  32. End universal credit, end child benefits and end social housing.

    Let the benefit scroungers move to a cheaper country if they cannot afford to live in the UK.

    Black hole solved with plenty left for investment. Growth follows with more tax revenue leading to more investment and more growth.

  33. Why can’t Britain tell the difference between operating expenses and investment?? A new rail line or hospital should not be viewed in the same category as fuel allowance for example.

  34. Need to get our collective heads out of “we need to do less” and into “more, more, more”.

  36. I heard someone that in an economic downturn, the government is supposed to spend money but in an economic upturn, they are not. Does Labour want the economic downturn to get worse and the tax receipts to get even less?

  37. We, as a country, never learn.

    We were one of the slowest to come out of the last recession because we tried to cut and save to come out rather than spend and stimulate the economy and here we are about to repeat the same mistakes again.

    It doesn’t help that vast swathes of the UK population are financially illiterate personally never mind at larger scale economics and treat everything like they are a few hundred short one month “oooh we’ll just spend a bit less.”

    I would argue we should add economics to secondary education but firstly the government(s) of the UK love their population thick and the horse has so far bolted it’s lost over the horizon and a hopeless endeavour to recover it.

  38. It is worth noting where this black hole comes from:

    * Pay awards £11.6bn
    * Health (excluding pay pressures) £1.5bn
    * Asylum and illegal migration £6.4bn
    * New policy commitments including household support fund and bus extensions £2.6bn
    * Rail – passenger services and maintenance due to shortfall in expected passenger numbers £2.9bn
    * Ukraine – military and civilian support £1.7bn

    minus the reserve and you end up with £22 billion.

  39. I’m not surprised as the tories caused it and scrapping projects shouldn’t happen. High Speed 2, alone, is costing billions and it’s now, too expensive to cancel. For what’s been built, they could have easily used that money to re-open several old lines that are viable to help ease traffic, upgrade the remaining non-electrified routes, get new services in. I believe, Thameslink was about to launch a Ashford to Cambridge service pre-covid. etc…

    We just have literal shitty rivers and seas, our infastructure is fucked.

  40. Dear me, the IFS has already stated some of this black hole is from commitments Labour had already made, plus the Civil Service submitting false figures. But yeah you keep up the it’s all the Conservatives fault. lol

  41. why dont they stop the billions they send to third world countries to fight climate change?

  42. Why is 22b such and large black hole? Is it really as bad as they are making it out to be?

  43. It’ll be larger because of Labour and caving to the unions.

  45. Realistically if the government had any balls they’d mean test state pensions in the same way as Australia does, for those who are currently below the age of 40-45. They should also means test the triple lock for those currently on state pension and anyone who doesn’t need it should get a smaller rise.

    This alone would obliterate that “black hole” and allow them to use money for things that will improve the country.

    Until this country addresses the problem that is the state pension, there will never be any money for anything. It won’t be popular but it has to be done and THEY KNOW THAT.

  46. Pity they don’t scrap the Climate Scam (Ed Milipede giving another £11.6bn away), scrap funding the US-Russia proxy way, and scrap putting boating enthusiasts up in hotels.

  47. Rachel Reeves and Labour were completely aware of the state of public finances leading up to the election and deliberately played dumb so that they could push a rhetoric to get in

    The IFS have been reporting on this for several months. Both major parties were completely aware

    Labour and Reeves also wanted to shoe in their public sector wage rises costing 9.4 billion well before the October budget and even before they started to signal ‘October will be very hard’

    Piss off. I am so tired by the state of politics in this country

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