Jeremy Hunt’s budget statement last week might calm markets. It is unlikely to calm its chief clients: the public services. Here, the best Hunt could claim is that they were warned. After 10 years of austerity and two of pandemic chaos, all sectors other than health now face real terms cuts. Hunt is not going to help them any more. They must help themselves.
The oddest contribution to this challenge was reported this summer from two health secretaries, Sajid Javid and Steve Barclay. Both said that their department could live within its budget, and that it should concentrate on efficiency. They were influenced by embarrassing figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies showing that in the health service “extra resources are not being translated into more treatment”. Efficiency was the watchword, but then it had been for years. What was the problem?
