How to fund the abolition of £150bn Income Tax.
1.Dept for International Development
2006/7 Budget £4,923mn, also £1,867mn in non-DFID debt relief and £698mn in other non-DFID debt relief. http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/sid2007/section2.asp
2006/7 DFID admin budget £234mn http://www.dfid.gov.uk/aboutdfid/statistics.asp
DFID assets £2,596mn
I think it’s reasonable to include the non-DFID debt relief as it shows the voters just how much this sort of thing costs them.
The whole Dept can easily be scrapped.
2.Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
2006/7 Budget £1,800mn? assets core dept £1,254mn
British Council budget £200mn assets £110mn
BBC World Service budget £200mn assets £155mn
Scrap the British Council and BBC World Service. These figures need to be checked.
Will we keep the FO? Staffing levels are 6,000 UK citizens and 10,000 foreigners in 260 locations, could this be cut. I have only included the BC and WS in the figures below.
3.Dept for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform
2006/7 Budget £10,200mn, assets £7,469mn
http://www.berr.gov.uk/about/strategy-o … 40577.html
List of quangos for this Dept
http://www.berr.gov.uk/about/strategy-o … 40391.html
This can be scrapped entirely apart from the organisations below whom I have left out of the figures above.
Nuclear Decommisioning Auth
UK Atomic Energy Auth
British Energy Group
British Nuclear Fuels
We will need a policey on nuclear power, or will we leave it to the market?
4.Dept Culture Media and Sport
http://www.culture.gov.uk/Reference_lib … r_2007.htm
2006/7 budget £4,717mn (Excludes National Lottery) assets £4,412mn
Another dept that can be scrapped completely.
Is the BBC included in these figures?
5.Dept for Communities and Local Gov
http://www.communities.gov.uk/publicati … l-report07
2007/8 budget £10,438mn (Excluding local gov funding £23,764mn) assets £432mn
Will central gov still partly fund local gov?
Move the funding of local govt to the treasury and scrap this dept or simply scrap whole dept?
6.Dept for Children Schools and Families
http://www.dfes.gov.uk/aboutus/reports/index.shtml#ydr
2007/8 budget £78,510mn assets £202mn
Another department to be scrapped. Fund children direct from the treasury with school vouchers [1]. What do we do about Uni students?
7.Dept for Transport
2007/8 budgets
Highways Agency (new roadbuilding only) £4,122mn
Rail Subsidies £4,417mn
Bus subsidies £478mn
Local Transport Funding £1,930mn
Transport for London £2,554mn
This is what we could get rid of from this dept and leave intact the maintainance side of the Highways Agency and various accident investigation units and DVLC, DVO etc.
8.Dept Innovation Universities and Skills
2007/8 Science budget £3,382mn assets £1,166mn
Higher Education Funding Councils
2007/8 budget England £5,788mn
2007/8 budget Scotland £1,600mn
2007/8 budget Wales £276mn
2007/8 budget Learning and Skills Council £3,063mn assets £82mn
This can be scrapped as well.
9.Dept for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/deprep/default.htm
2006/7
Keep Environmental Protection budget £1950mn?
Scrap Animal Health and Welfare, Sustainable Farming Food and Fisheries, Natural Reasources and Rural affairs, Rural Payments Agency, Dept Core, Budget £2076mn
Assets £2,418mn
We may well need to keep the Environment Agency, are they responsible for water quality? What else do they do? I haven’t included them in the figures below.
10. Tax Cedits 2007/8 £14,758mn
http://www.hmtreasury.gov.uk/economic_d … pesa07.cfm
With no Income Tax this becomes unnecessary.
11.Student Loans £3,710mn
http://www.hmtreasury.gov.uk/economic_d … pesa07.cfm
If we stop subsidising students or directly fund their education this is unnecessary.
12. EU contribution £14,600mn (gross)
We will be leaving the EU.
Total budget £174,741mn[2] Total assets£19,042mn[3]
[1] Education vouchers
But how much would all this cost?
Well, firstly, lets assume we do introduce education vouchers.
Secondly, that the vouchers are worth £4000 per pupil to age 18 and £10,000 per uni student.
There are about 8,430,000 kids aged 5-16 so thats about £33bn.
There are about 1,600,000 aged 17-18, assume 85% stay in education thats about £5.5bn.
Assume 2,460,000 aged 19-21 and 60% go to Uni, thats about £15bn.
Thats a total of £53.5bn, add on a generous .5bn for central admin gives a grand total of £54bn.
But is £4000 a year enough. Imagine a class of 25 kids, that’s £100,000 a year into that classroom. This is easily enough money to pay for teachers, books, equipment, building etc.
Incidently, £4000 is the average funding per pupil for an LEA in 2005/6.
[2] The total budget could be increased by not funding students £15,000mn and not funding local gov £23,764mn which gives a total of £213,505mn minus education vouchers for children £39,000mn = £174,000mn. IOW more than enough to abolish Income Tax.
[3] This figure is unlikely to be accurate. I haven’t spent much time on this. Dumping of assets will depress the market price and some assets might well be wrongly valued.
Isn’t it surprising just how much fat there is on govt spending.
