Public services Parties must come clean over scale of crisis - thinktank

Political parties must be honest about the immediate crisis of collapsing public services facing the next government, according to a hard-hitting report that lays bare the crisis affecting the NHS, criminal justice system, prisons and local government.

- Larry Elliott

In a direct challenge to Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer to come clean with voters, the Institute for Government thinktank said most state services are performing worse than at the time of the 2019 general election and "substantially worse" than when the Conservatives took office in 2010.

The IfG said it was not plausible for the winning party on 4 July to stick to current spending plans at a time when the performance of hospitals was arguably the worst in the history of the NHS, prisons were at crisis point, and councils were shutting libraries and cutting back on waste collection and social care.

Warning that few incoming administrations had faced challenges of such severity, the thinktank called on the Conservatives and Labour to provide a "credible vision" for dealing with problems that had worsened since Boris Johnson won his landslide victory in December 2019.

The election campaign has been dominated this week by the row over Sunak's claim that Labour would need to raise taxes by £2,000 to fund its spending pledges. Both main parties are relying heavily on a growing economy to provide extra revenues to boost public spending, though Labour has said it will raise more money through taxes on private school fees, scrapping the non-dom tax status of wealthy foreign nationals in the UK and a stiffer windfall tax on energy companies.