July Budget 2015: Where does the government spend its money?
In Wednesday’s budget, George Osborne announced a range of cuts, as he said the biggest mistake Britain could make would be to consider a half-finished recovery a job well done. He announced cuts of £37bn by 2020, including £12bn of welfare cuts and a £20bn reduction in departmental budgets. But where is the fat to chop?
The most recent government data for a full-year of public sector spending is for 2013/14. The biggest spending department was Work and Pensions, which spent £170.6bn. £115.4bn went on health, while £56.8bn was spent on education.
Raw figures only tell part of the story, however. Some of the smaller departments have endured the largest proportional cuts: the office of rail regulation, for example, suffered a 97 per cent drop in funding between 2013 and 2014, but its budget was only £30m to begin with.
Meanwhile the three per cent drop for Culture, Media, and Sport saved over £2.5bn.
[custom id="46"]
The interactive above allows you to explore how much each department spends. By pressing chart, you can see how the departments compare both in terms of spending and cuts. Applying a logarithmic scale reveals the cuts at the lower end of the spending scale, where departments have seen large proportions of their funding cut.