Ben Zaranko @BenZaranko Twitter profile

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Ben Zaranko

19 days

Okay, fiscal rules, investment and the Budget. Some key highlights for those who, for whatever reason, don’t want to read a long and nerdy paper about fiscal rules on a Friday afternoon. Can be boiled down to 4 key points.🧵

Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

20 days

Do you want to read 4,000 words from @TheIFS on the fiscal rules, investment spending, and Rachel Reeves’ options at the Budget? Of course you do. Link here. I’ll summarise key points later.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

The NHS has more funding and more staff than it had pre-pandemic. At the same time, across most types of care, the NHS is treating fewer patients than it was pre-Covid and is clearly struggling heading into the winter. What's going on? A thread, based on new @TheIFS research 🧵

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

The Chancellor is expected to announce a large package of permanent tax cuts on Friday without a new set of forecasts from the OBR. This is disappointing. So, in the absence of official scrutiny from the OBR, we @TheIFS have stepped into the breach. 🧵

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

3 months

Need to see the detail, but I think Rachel Reeves has grounds to be cross. The in-year funding pressures do genuinely appear to be greater than could be discerned from outside. The £9bn contingency ‘reserve’ has seemingly been spent several times over. It’s a mess.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

I don't think this number is accurate. At best, it paints an incomplete picture. A quick on why 🧵

BBC Politics

@BBCPolitics

2 years

"What I'm not going to do is ask ordinary families up and down the country to pay an extra £1,000 a year to meet the pay demands of the union bosses" PM Rishi Sunak says he's looking at "tough new laws" to minimise strike disruption

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

This is interesting, on the impacts of starting child benefit payments in pregnancy rather than at birth. Sending pregnant mothers in the UK three months' worth (~£190) in the third trimester led to 1) higher average birth weight 2) fewer babies being born prematurely.

Mary Reader

@reader_mary

2 years

Incredibly excited to have my first sole-authored paper published today at @JHealthEcon on the infant health effects of starting child benefits in pregnancy 📈🤰🏩

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

Here's a puzzle: NHS spending in England this year is ~12% higher in real terms than in 2019/20. There are 13% more doctors (incl. 10% more consultants) than in 2019, 11% more nurses, and 10% more clinical support staff. Yet the NHS is treating fewer people from the waiting list.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

6 months

It's only a "£75 billion increase" over 6 years if you assume that spending would otherwise have been frozen in cash terms for 6 years - i.e. only if the government was, until today, planning to breach its NATO commitments. This is such an unhelpful way to present the figures.

HM Treasury

@hmtreasury

6 months

NEWS: UK set to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030 - an increase of £75 billion. Chief Secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott visited Wellington Barracks in Westminster today to explain what this means.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

A useful stat to bear in mind while the pay of public sector workers is in the news. In April 2022, average pay in the private sector was 4.3% higher than in January 2010, after adjusting for inflation. That's pretty poor. But in the public sector, it was 4.3% LOWER.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

With strikes on the horizon, here's a bit of context on what's been happening to average nurse pay in England. Since 2010, nurses' pay (the purple line) has lagged behind inflation, and behind average pay growth in both the public and private sectors.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

8 months

Labour's green investment plans were the only bit of clear daylight between the two major parties on tax and spend. Looks increasingly like we'll have a Ford Model T election: voters can have any fiscal policy they want, as long as it's existing government policy...

BBC News (UK)

@BBCNews

8 months

Labour ditches £28bn green investment pledge

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

6 months

To get the £75 billion number, the government has assumed a baseline with spending frozen in cash terms and then added up all of the differences. If you instead assume a baseline of spending frozen as a % GDP, it's an extra £20 billion over 6 years. Details here.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

The NHS waiting list in England (the ‘backlog’) now stands at 7.1 million, 60% higher than pre-pandemic. This backlog is still growing month on month. Why? And what would it take for it to start falling? Brief 🧵 based on new analysis out today:

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

In short, the government is planning a substantial package of permanent tax cuts that will mean a sharp and sustained increase in borrowing, just as borrowing becomes more expensive, in a gamble on growth that may not pay off. You can't assume your way to fiscal sustainability.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

3 months

One thing I would like to know is what the government has spent £8.6bn on from the Reserve over the first few months of the financial year if it's not Ukraine, asylum costs or public sector pay awards. Yesterday's document leaves us none the wiser.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

3 years

Spending Review 2021, in one chart. For most departments, the budget increases announced today will be welcome, but not enough to reverse the cuts of the 2010s. Austerity is over, but not undone.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

3 years

My favourite chart I've made for a while. Shows that big cuts during austerity years of the 2010s have only been partially reversed for most departments. The Justice budget, for instance, is still set to be 21% lower in 2021−22 than in 2009−10.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

11 months

Where did the money for yesterday's tax cuts come from? Here's the one chart @TheIFS summary of the Autumn Statement. Tax cuts were matched almost 1-for-1 by cuts in the real-terms generosity of public service budgets.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

I just re-discovered this chart, showing how the number of home insulation projects delivered through government schemes fell off a cliff after 2013. From 1.3m loft insulations per year, to fewer than 100,000. With hindsight that feels... sub-optimal

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

1 year

The six year freeze to income tax and national insurance thresholds is now set to raise a colossal £52 billion in 2027/28. To give a sense of scale, that's equivalent to 6p on the basic and higher rate of income tax, or increasing the main rate of VAT from 20% to 26%.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 months

Seems as good a day as any to point out that, according to official estimates, UK public sector productivity is lower now than it was when Oasis released Be Here Now (the data doesn't go as far back as Definitely Maybe).

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

It's worth remembering that the average number patients in NHS hospitals with Covid-19 in 2022 has been higher than in 2021. I think it's easy to lose sight of that.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

3 years

I'm increasingly convinced that the GDP deflator (which underlies official calculations of how generous government spending plans are) isn't a helpful way of looking at the cost pressures on public services this year. This is nerdy, but important. A thread 🧵 [1/13]

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

6 months

A plea to whoever writes these press releases and social media posts: 1) stop using dodgy baselines 2) stop adding up the "extra" spending over an arbitrary period 3) if you can't do 1) and 2), at least be internally consistent

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

Here's the first key chart. The NHS has considerably more hospital staff than it did pre-pandemic. Rates of sickness absence are (quite a lot) higher, but even after adjusting for that, there's 9% more consultants, 15% more junior doctors, and 8% more nurses than in 2019.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

Increasingly concinced that I will live my entire life without seeing a revaluation of the house prices used for council tax. What a hopeless failure of politics and policy.

Institute for Fiscal Studies

@TheIFS

2 years

By 2027–28, council tax will return to just above its previous peak after two decades. Council tax remains "regressive, distortionary and based on hopelessly out-of-date property values", says @StuartAdam_IFS .

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

As the debate about NHS productivity rumbles on, here's a great new paper with evidence from Chile. Key finding: managers matter for hospital performance. The biggest gains come from replacing older "doctor CEOs" with new CEOs who've gone through management training.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

6 months

To make matters worse, when briefing the press the government said that this would "only" cost £4.4 billion in 2028/29. That assumes a baseline of 2.3% of GDP and so is inconsistent with the £75 billion number. They're just picking whichever baseline suits best.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

Note, though, that the NHS is carrying out more GP appointments than it was in 2019, despite a 2% reduction in GP numbers. And, the number of first cancer appointments is substantially up on pre-pandemic levels. We shouldn't lose sight of these successes.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

3 years

Sunak says every penny raised from the forthcoming NICs rise is earmarked for health and social care budgets. He's raising NICs thresholds, which will reduce how much it raises. But the NHS budget won't be reduced by a corresponding amount. The hypothecation is a myth!

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

Under these forecasts, a worsening economic outlook and a big package of tax cuts mean that even once the (enormous) Energy Price Guarantee has expired, borrowing would be running at ~£100bn/year (~3.5% GDP) into the mid 2020s. That's ~£70bn/year more than was forecast in March.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

You can read the full report by my colleagues here. This is part of the IFS Green Budget & funded by @NuffieldFound . The analysis is based on a new set of macroeconomic forecasts from Citi. Here, I just want to draw out a few things.

Reversing NICs and corporation tax rises would leave debt on an unsustainable path | Institute for...

In the absence of official scrutiny from the OBR, we set out how much red ink might be added to the fiscal forecasts.

ifs.org.uk

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

Our broad conclusion: it's possible that Covid has dealt a permanent, adverse hit to NHS performance, leaving the health service able to treat fewer patients from a given level of resources. This is not inevitable, but there are worrying signs pointing in this direction.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

So, even if the NHS is treating fewer *individual patients*, if those patients are sicker on average and require more intensive treatment, it could be that the NHS is providing a greater amount of care than a simple focus on treatment volumes would suggest.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

Moving on from the direct impacts of Covid, there are clear signs that the NHS is struggling to discharge hospital patients out into the community or social care, which further clogs up the system and acts as a drain on staff resources.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

Borrowing more and allowing debt to rise temporarily to finance one-off support packages in a crisis (e.g. furlough, energy price guarantee) is justifiable and can be sustainable. The same cannot be said for allowing debt to rise indefinitely to enjoy lower taxes now.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

The short version is: this is a puzzle without a single or simple explanation. Covid-19 is clearly having lasting adverse impacts on the health system. The real risk is that these lingering Covid effects continue to hinder NHS performance for months and years to come.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

In other words, temporary, time-limited measures need to be thought of separately to any permanent changes to tax and spending. The latter ought not to be announced outside of a 'proper' fiscal event and without scrutiny from the OBR.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

8 months

The government doesn’t have to provide any detail on its post-2025 spending plans. It just gets to pick a number. So why stop here? Why not pencil in 50 quid for public services each year, and spend the savings on tax cuts? Without specifics, this just lacks credibility.

Financial Times

@FT

8 months

UK chancellor Jeremy Hunt is considering slashing billions of pounds from public spending plans to fund pre-election tax cuts if he is penned in by tight finances in his March 6 Budget

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

6 months

I’m slightly late to this, but the recent fall in the number of visa applications from health and social care workers is truly remarkable. Down from 18,300 applicants in August 2023 to 2,400 in March 2024.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

Perhaps the most convincing partial explanation is that although the total number of NHS hospital beds has returned to pre-pandemic levels, the *number of beds available for non-Covid activity* in the third quarter of 2022 was still lower than pre-pandemic.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

That would mean: 1) A persistent current budget deficit (i.e. borrowing to finance day-to-day spend) 2) Debt on a steady upwards path as a share of national income i.e. the existing fiscal targets (legislated in January) missed by a wide margin

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

1 year

This is what happens when you freeze local housing allowance rates during a period of soaring rents. In 2013, housing benefit was enough to cover the rent on 22% of private rental properties on Zoopla. Now, that figure is 5%. It's not just mortgagors under the cosh!

Institute for Fiscal Studies

@TheIFS

1 year

NEW: Freezes to housing benefit despite skyrocketing rent growth mean just 5% of private rental properties on Zoopla can be covered by housing benefits. Read our report on housing for low-income households, funded by @jrf_uk :

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

Delayed discharges are not just a social care problem. But it is worth noting that the adult social care workforce in England shrank by 3% last year, with a 52% increase in vacancies. The sector clearly has capacity problems.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

Thanks to @BBCHughPym for a nice write-up on the BBC site

How Covid has dealt the NHS a lasting blow

The health service is treating fewer patients than before Covid, so why is it still struggling?

www.bbc.co.uk

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

1 year

A properly jaw-dropping stat: almost one-in-four 16 year olds girls have been in contact with NHS mental health services in the past year (2021/22 data). It was more like one-in-nine four years earlier (when the data starts). via @TomWatersEcon @Heidi_Karj

Institute for Fiscal Studies

@TheIFS

1 year

More than one in five girls aged 16 were in contact with NHS mental health services (including learning disabilities and autism services) in 2021-22. This is double the rate of the rate just four years earlier. [6/7]

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

It's also possible that a general worsening of population health - evident in the rising number of disability benefit claimants for a broad range of health conditions - is increasing the number of patients requiring complex, resource-intensive treatment.

Tom Waters

@TomWatersEcon

2 years

And, as with disability benefits, we see it across conditions. Things as varied as mental conditions to heart & blood to vision & hearing. All up by a roughly similar amount.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

In other words, after adjusting for the fact that there's a load of beds filled with Covid patients, there's just fewer beds available to treat everybody else. (Between 1% and 5% fewer, depending on how you measure it and which Covid patients you adjust for).

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

One symptom of that: the number of beds occupied by patients who have been in hospital for more than 7 days is 14% higher than at this point last year. The number occupied by patients who have been in for more than 21 days is 24% higher.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

4 months

A remarkable stat that jumped out to me from this new @ONS piece comparing NHS waiting lists across different bits of the UK: After adjusting for population size, the number of people waiting > 52 weeks for pre-planned care is *nine* times higher in Wales than in England.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

1 year

In 2000, Tony Blair unexpectedly announced that UK health spending would increase to the EU average. Gordon Brown reportedly raged that Blair had “stolen [his] f***ing budget”. The recent NHS long-term workforce plan has probably stolen more than a decade of budgets. 🧵

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

There's lots more detail in the full piece, which you can find at the link above. We've also got an event tomorrow where we'll be talking through this analysis (among other things), and answering questions. Come along!

A look ahead to Friday's mini-Budget | Institute for Fiscal Studies

On Friday, the Chancellor will make his first fiscal statement since taking office. What should we look out for?

ifs.org.uk

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

The full report, co-authored with my colleague Max Warner, can be found here. It focuses on the NHS in England, and uses only publicly available data.

NHS funding, resources and treatment volumes | Institute for Fiscal Studies

This report examines how NHS funding, resources and treatment volumes compare with pre-pandemic levels.

ifs.org.uk

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

But despite more funding and more staff, across almost all major types of care, the NHS is treating fewer patients than it was at the same point in 2019: in the latest month, 14% fewer emergency admissions, 14% fewer outpatient appointments, and 11% fewer elective admissions.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

(side note: this is all based on policy as currently announced. If the Chancellor announces further tax cuts on Friday, that would change things and almost certainly mean even higher borrowing. In that case we'd of course update after the fact)

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

Remember, the UK has suffered an adverse economic shock that makes us poorer as a country. A weaker outlook for the economy, combined with higher levels of debt interest spending, means that providing a given level of public service funding will likely require higher taxes.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

Finding a way to somehow boost the UK's (meagre) rate of economic growth would undoubtedly help and be good news for the public finances. But there's no simple miracle cure. We get a new 'plan for growth' most years. No guarantee it will materialise. Relying on it is a gamble.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

1 year

The level of taxation in the UK is pretty middling by international standards. Where the UK does stand out is the extent to which we kept taxes relatively flat between the financial crisis and Covid, in the face of demographic change and weak growth. Now, we're playing catch-up.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

I think the Chancellor has backed himself into a corner. He announced permanent tax cuts, with no hint of any spending cuts to offset these, without any independent scrutiny from the OBR, and without even a half-hearted attempt to show how the public finance numbers might add up.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

The short version: nurse shortages matter and cost lives. Especially shortages of: 1) more experienced/senior nurses 2) nurses working in their usual hospital Healthcare support workers and agency staff are NOT like-for-like replacements for experienced registered nurses.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

6 months

"A 20-year-old today is about as likely to claim a health-related benefit as a 39-year-old was in 2019. A 35-year-old today is about as likely to claim as a 46-year-old in 2019." 👆 I found this a helpful way to frame the scale of the recent surge in disability benefit claims.

Institute for Fiscal Studies

@TheIFS

6 months

NEW: 4.2 million working-age people, or one in 10, are now claiming health-related benefits – and this could rise by 30% to 5.4 million by 2028–29. Read @TomWatersEcon and Sam Ray-Chaudhuri's new Election 2024 report, funded by @finan_fairness :

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

6 months

Here’s one for the fiscal nerds: In recent years, as much as one-fifth of all measured public investment was in fact student loans (the loans the government makes and doesn’t expect to get back). The headline numbers overstate how much ‘actual’ investment we’re doing.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

This sharp increase in borrowing will take place amidst rising gilt yields (not just in the UK, but globally), which makes that borrowing more expensive. The Bank won't be stepping in to buy bonds either - they're looking to unwind QE. It's not risk-free.

Faisal Islam

@faisalislam

2 years

Meanwhile… 10 year gilt rates hit 11 year high of 3.3% , 30 year borrowing is now 3.6%, up from 2.4% 7 weeks ago

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

My @TheIFS colleague @xiaoweixu_ has just joined Twitter and is very much worth following. She does work on all sorts of interesting things. For example, this stunning chart which (I think) explains a huge amount about the politics and economics of Great Britain.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

That's a big change! For context, the number of full-time equivalent nurses grew by just 3% between 2010 and 2019. And it's increased by 8% in three years since 2019, even after adjusting for the fact that more days are now lost to sickness absence.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

Today, we publish the 2022 edition of @TheIFS Green Budget, which provides in-depth analysis of the key challenges and trade-offs facing the Chancellor. As one of the editors, I obviously think you should read it in full. But here's some highlights:

IFS Green Budget 2022 | Institute for Fiscal Studies

Policy analysis from our IFS Green Budget 2022, funded by the Nuffield Foundation and in partnership with Citi.

ifs.org.uk

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

So, any given increase in NHS funding is now more difficult to achieve – and persistent Covid impacts mean we might have to expect the NHS to treat fewer patients with that funding. That's not inevitable, but would pose major challenges for health and fiscal policy.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

As well as more (hospital) staff, the NHS also has more funding than it did pre-pandemic. That being said, inflation is eating into the real-terms value of that funding, making it less generous than originally intended. I'll deal with that in a separate thread.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

A few thoughts on Liz Truss' proposal for regional public sector pay deals, which she claims could eventually save up to £8.8 billion per year. 🧵

Liz Truss vows to take on Whitehall ‘establishment’ in Conservative leadership bid

Foreign secretary targets civil service pay and refuses to rule out breaking up Treasury

www.ft.com

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

We’ve heard a lot from the Conservative leadership candidates about their plans for tax cuts. We’ve heard much less about their vision for public spending. In the meantime, inflation is squeezing public service budgets as we head towards a difficult winter. A long-ish thread:

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

This is not an exhaustive list of possible explanations. We explore some others (changes to working hours, staff productivity, management, the quality of the NHS estate) in the report. There's only so much we can do with public data, but we've had a go.

NHS funding, resources and treatment volumes | Institute for Fiscal Studies

This report examines how NHS funding, resources and treatment volumes compare with pre-pandemic levels.

ifs.org.uk

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

3 years

It's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day drama. But it's also important to step back and consider the bigger picture. If average earnings had continued to grow after 2008 in line with the pre-recession trend, they'd be £11,000 higher. A stunning, horrifying stat.

Tom Waters

@TomWatersEcon

3 years

Real earnings are expected to fall this year as inflation spikes. But the bigger picture continues to be difficult to overstate in importance: almost no growth in real earnings since 2008. **£11k** lower average earnings than if pre-Great Recession trend had continued. Incredible

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

🚨GOOD NHS NEWS ALERT🚨 The latest month of NHS data shows that the size of the waiting list in England *fell* between October and November. The waiting list now stands at 7.19 million, down from 7.21 million the previous month. And there's more... 🧵

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

6 months

Going through some old Budget documents (for work, promise) and it's quite funny being able to pinpoint the moment at which the Treasury discovered WordArt (November 1996), needlessly 3-D bar charts (July 1998), and the ability to add a pointless shadow to pie charts (March 1999)

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

The OBR expect CPI inflation to be more than 7% next year. The Chancellor has confirmed he is sticking to his cash spending plans for the next two years, which are predicated on pay awards of ~2% per year. Another 5% real-terms pay cut for public sector workers on the way?

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

3 months

This also raises some questions for the last government, especially around what was known in the spring. If the scale of the overspends was apparent in March, the decision to go ahead with a £10 billion national insurance cut looks increasingly hard to justify.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

Nonetheless, on the face of it, something doesn't add up. There's more staffing, and more funding, but fewer patients are getting treated. So what's going on?

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

And, the official data suggest that in the first week of December, around 40% of those in hospital for more than 21 days were ready for discharge, compared with 34% at the same point in 2021. Even if the data is dodgy, the direction of travel is clear.

Lawrence Dunhill

@LawrenceDunhill

2 years

A former CEO of the NHS says most data collected on hospital discharges by NHS Eng is ‘useless’ & biased against social care. Sir David Nicholson said data around delayed discharges “is designed to show how bad social care is” from @mattdiscombe 1/2

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

So, the key conclusion is that unless the NHS can find a way to translate additional resources into additional activity, waiting lists won't start to fall any time soon. Read the piece (the first of a three-part series) at the link below:

Institute for Fiscal Studies

@TheIFS

2 years

NEW: NHS waiting lists have increased broadly in line with our past projections to 7.1 million. What might this mean for waiting lists in 2023? @BenZaranko and Max Warner on what the NHS will need to do to get waiting lists falling any time soon

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

1 year

The Chancellor's decision to "protect capital budgets in cash terms" represented a cut of between £5 billion and £15 billion, relative to the plans he inherited. Not sure I'd point to that particular decision if I was trying to demonstrate my commitment to public investment.

Faisal Islam

@faisalislam

1 year

Chancellor points out one of his first decisions was to protect in cash terms overall capital budgets… “in cash terms” is a pretty important caveat here at a time of generationally high inflation - it was not protected in real terms - as a %n of GDP heading to 2.1% from 2.9% now

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

That shortage of beds wouldn't necessarily explain why the number of outpatient appointments has fallen by so much, or why the NHS is managing fewer non-admitted waiting list pathways, but it has to be part of the explanation.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

The NHS treated 7.8% fewer patients from the waiting list over the first 10 months of 2022 than it managed over the same period in 2019. I wrote about what that might mean for the backlog recovery plan here:

Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

The NHS waiting list in England (the ‘backlog’) now stands at 7.1 million, 60% higher than pre-pandemic. This backlog is still growing month on month. Why? And what would it take for it to start falling? Brief 🧵 based on new analysis out today:

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

None of this is to say anything about the arguments for/against a higher public sector pay award. There's a proper debate to be had. But we shouldn't have it on the basis of dodgy numbers. Lots more on public sector pay in here:

Public spending, pay and pensions | Institute for Fiscal Studies

The public sector pay settlements announced this July will pose severe budgetary challenges for many areas of government.

ifs.org.uk

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

1 year

Each year, @TheIFS Green Budget provides in-depth analysis of the economic and fiscal challenges facing the Chancellor (filling the gap left by the absence of a green paper – hence the name). A few highlights and key charts from this year’s edition🧵

Green Budget 2023 | Institute for Fiscal Studies

The IFS Green Budget will assess the state of the UK economy and the government's fiscal position as attention turns towards next year's election.

ifs.org.uk

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

9 months

I'm sure this won't show up in the @ONS 's own public sector productivity statistics, but this button on their website is a life-saver and whoever invented it deserves a pay rise

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

1 year

There are rumours that the government could overrule the independent Pay Review Bodies’ recommendations and offer a lower pay rise to public sector workers, due to concerns about the possible impact on inflation. A few thoughts 🧵

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

With junior doctors on strike, here's some key context on what's happened to the pay of different NHS staffing groups since 2010👇 In general, higher-paid staffing groups have seen bigger pay cuts. Average junior doctor earnings fell by between 11% and 16% between 2010 and 2022.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

A reminder that this policy would save the typical household just £11 this winter.

emily m

@maitlis

2 years

Big applause for @trussliz pledge to suspend green levies at the Wembley hustings. The last hustings of the season.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

6 months

Exactly this 👇 It's a genuinely big and significant announcement. It's being welcomed internationally. There's no need to fudge the baseline to produce the biggest-sounding number possible.

Shashank Joshi

@shashj

6 months

Government deserves real credit for the defence boost & they could’ve spent the money elsewhere. But this sort of needless chicanery in presentation is what erodes public and expert trust in every such announcement.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

3 years

Describing this as the largest increase this century is...bold. Might be true in cash-terms (can check when documents are published). But if you look at average real-terms % growth, it's not even the largest increase this pandemic.

Rishi Sunak

@RishiSunak

3 years

Today’s Budget increases total departmental spending over this Parliament by £150bn. That’s the largest increase this century, with spending growing 3.8% a year in real terms. Every department will see a real terms rise in overall spending as a result of this #SpendingReview .

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

New NHS figures show the scale of the challenge it faces heading into the winter. At the end of November, the number of beds occupied by patients with a hospital stay of more than three weeks was already above the *highest level reached in any of the past 5 winters*.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

... if we're talking about the *cost to the government*, and what it might mean for households, we also need to take into account the fact that some of the higher pay would come back to the Treasury in the form of higher tax payments. That would further reduce the net cost.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

@JuliaHB1 Hi Julia - yes, it did: between January 2000 and January 2010, average pay rose by 15.9% in private sector and 20.2% in the public. If we look at the whole period from Jan 2000 to now, it's up 21.0% in private sector and 15.0% in the public sector.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

Big arguments over public sector pay deals later this year are inevitable. Money is tight, so where should pay awards be targeted? Some new thoughts from me, inspired by and based around this chart. A long thread... 🧵

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

The government has claimed that offering an inflation-matching pay award to all public sector workers would cost £28 billion. There's around 28 million households in the UK. So that's equivalent to around £1,000 per household. But I think there's a few problems with this.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

3 months

It does seem a bit ridiculous that the Home Office has submitted Main Estimates to Parliament that officials themselves acknowledge will be insufficient to deal with costs of asylum support this year (despite being told off last year for the same thing).

Jeremy Hunt

@Jeremy_Hunt

3 months

Following statements made in the House, I have written to the Cabinet Secretary on the concerning contradiction between the Main Estimates put before Parliament last week and the document presented by the Chancellor today.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

1 year

A useful thread from @goldstone_tony on doctor pay, with whom I don't always agree, but who is always thoughtful and engages with the data.

Dr Tony Goldstone

@goldstone_tony

1 year

1/ Short 🧵 on lies, damned lies, & statistics I've seen some rather misleading use of statistics on the BBC / Sky today, its not clear whether they dont understand the differences, or they are trying to mislead Please read all & share / RT

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

5) Dividing it by the number of households and implying that every "ordinary" household would have to pay that amount extra in tax is a bit misleading: it obviously depends on which taxes were increased.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

2 years

New analysis for the BBC shows record numbers of nurses quitting the NHS. But what impact do nurse shortages have, and what benefit would extra nurses bring? We've got some timely new research which looks at precisely these questions. 🧵

Record number of nurses quitting the NHS

Experts call for urgent action on brain drain of staff as 40,000 walk away in the past year.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

3 years

I grew up reading @martinwolf_ 's columns in the @FT (I was admittedly an odd child). To now see him cite and quote my research is a genuine pleasure. My 15-year old self would be thrilled.

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Ben Zaranko

@BenZaranko

3 months

The changes to the spending framework announced today are therefore very welcome: holding a spending review every two years and sticking to just one major fiscal each year should improve things. These are changes to process, not policy, but they matter.

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