A Conservative manifesto, adjusted to UK inflation
As prices keep going up, Elena Siniscalco looks at what happens to the Conservative manifesto pledges from 2019 when we adjust them in line with inflation
Inflation is at 10.5 per cent in the UK. This isolated number can feel quite difficult to quantify, but we see it everywhere around us – in the price of our favourite loaf of bread, or cup of coffee, going up. With it comes real-term pay cuts – unless you get a raise that at a minimum matches the pace of inflation. This is, in part, what public sector workers are on strike for – while the government maintains that raising salaries would worsen inflation by pumping more money into the economy.
In this spirit, why not see what happens if we adjust the 2019 Conservative manifesto commitments in line with inflation?
Take health – one area likely to shape Rishi Sunak’s premiership in the first part of the year. The NHS is cracked across its many limbs. Nurses and ambulance staff have been striking over pay – with the latter on the picket line just yesterday. Morale is incredibly low, and patients are feeling the pain of a system currently unequipped to cater to their needs. In 2019, the Tories promised to bring £34bn in additional funding for the NHS per year by the end of the Parliament. Adjusted to inflation, that takes it up to £37.6bn. Here then, the government seems to be on schedule, with the 2021 spending review confirming that spending should be £38.9bn higher in 2023/2025 than 2019/2020. But in December 2019, there was no pandemic. So, if you take into account inflation, that’s only extra £1.3bn for all of the resources sucked up by Covid-19 and lockdowns. For context, the UK spent £12bn on personal protective equipment.
Although it is money that nurses and ambulance staff are on strike for – and there is no question that nurses’ salaries are too low – simply throwing money at the system won’t fix its problems. The 2019 manifesto contained all sorts of promises to fix the NHS beyond spending – and the big one was about new hospitals.
Boris Johnson promised to build 40 new hospitals by 2030. Accounting for inflation, that is 44 hospitals. How many have been built? One. And when we talk about new hospitals, remember the Conservatives have interpreted this rather loosely, counting rebuilding an existing facility or constructing a new wing, as a “a new hospital”. The government infrastructure watchdog defined this project “unachievable”.
Alongside NHS staff, teachers are set to strike next month. The manifesto pledged to raise teachers’ starting salaries to £30,000. If we put it up by inflation, it would be at £33,150. The government is on track on this one, but it’s been delaying the process with salaries expected to reach the initial figure only next year. The education secretary’s weird claim that teachers are in the “top 10 per cent” of highest earners has done little to calm their union down.
The government is lucky builders are not going on strike, because if their income depended solely on how many houses they built, they would be the first to the picket line. The manifesto promised 300,000 homes a year in England to bring down the cost of housing. Inflation brings that number up to 331,500. Less than 250,000 were built in 2019/20 and 2020/21. A recent rebellion saw housing targets almost wiped out – presumably on the basis that if you can’t reach your target, it’s better to hide it under the bed.
This is simply an exercise in imagination – a series of what-if-scenarios, if you wish. But inflation is impacting every industry and the government – and their promises – should be no exception. Perhaps if the government had been working harder to respect their manifesto pledges, and not let’s say, enjoying a tipple in lockdowns, the infrastructure of Britain wouldn’t be so susceptible. Inflation has made every gap more visible – and more painful – the manifesto is no exception.
One last broken promise you might have forgotten about is planting trees. Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson briefly had a tree spat back in 2019. Corbyn promised to plant 100 million trees a year – an infeasible 200 trees per minute. Johnson had pledged to plant 30 million trees a year – there’s still an ample selection of pictures of him planting and trimming trees. In the end, no one planted anything; the number of new trees has actually dropped – only 4.2 million trees were planted in 2020/21. Sunak will need to get his hands dirty to meet the 33 million inflation would tot the tree bill up to now.