Every financial year has been an all-too-familiar story: the Labour government announces a Budget with all sorts of flashy proposals and giveaways, whilst the real Budget is buried away in the small print - and can take days to come out.
This time it was different. Of course, Labour still tried to hide the details they didn’t want us to see - but by harnessing the wisdom of the crowds the Conservatives were able to hold them account on those details quicker than ever before.
When we published the full Budget onto YourBudgetResponse.co.uk, thousands of people pored over its pages with over a thousand submitting comments to us about specific sections of it. A number of these crowdsourced comments helped to shape our response, and subsequently the response of the media.
If you were one of the people who helped – thank you. We’ve republished below the comment that helped us the most, followed by the selection of ten others.
The top comment was the first one to spot that the Budget would hit pensioners hard. We picked up on this comment, worked up a detailed briefing note, and it became a major story.
TOP BUDGET RESPONSE
“Have you noticed in the small print, Labour have frozen income tax allowances while the pension increase is far less than the rate of inflation. Added together – that means pensioners will be worse off. Yet another Gordon Brown stealth tax. Stick it to ‘em!”
OTHER RESPONSES
“In section 5.85 it says that tobacco duty will increase by 1% above inflation every year and then subsequently it says it will increase by 2% above inflation. Which is it 1% or 2%?”
“Can you shed some light on this? Red Book page 189, Table C3
Public Sector Net Debt at March 09 – 617.0 billion Public Sector Net Debt at March 15 – 1406 billion
Increase March 2009 to March 2015 is 789 Billion
Annual increases in net borrowing shown for 09/10 to 14/15 in the same Table are: 166.5 : 163 : 131 : 110 : 89 : 74
Thus these total (for the same six year period) 733.5 Billion. What is causing this 55.5 billion hole (understatement in annual net borrowing) I.E between the 789 and 733.5 billion?”
“A 50p monthly tax for Broadband for millions of pensioners who don’t use it erodes any pension increase – this is grossly unfair.”
“Labour is trying to give the impression to the general public that are planning to reduce, rather than continuing to increase, the national debt.
It seems to me that just by decreasing the rate of public sector ‘net borrowing’ one is not reducing the actual debt, but in fact still increasing it, not paying it down. The continued use
of words like ‘reduction of’ and ‘lower than’ give the impression that borrowing is coming down WHEN IT’S ACTUALLY STILL GOING UP.
If I’ve really understood this right, perhaps you could bang on about this in a fairly simple way: eg ‘Labour keep telling you they are reducing borrowing. They’re not. Their own figures show that they’re increasing it and they plan to keep on increasing it, making matters even worse.”
“P11 Overview. This diagram illustrates the magnitude of the problem in clear easily understood form! Expenditure 30% above income. What company or individual faced with this situation would pin its strategy on “efficiency savings”? Clearly large cuts in expenditure are required. This encapsulates Labour’s dishonesty about the future.
In the absence of an index I cannot find the appropriate section. However, I think much can be made of the relative increase in duties on tobacco and alcohol. Why were cigarettes subject to only a 1p increase whereas alcohol and cider were subject to 2p and 10p. respectively? Why, since tobacco is so harmful, was it not harder hit, as it has been in the past?”
“The PM and Chancellor were well aware when the 2009 pre-budget report was produced that an election would be held in April/May of 2010. Can we be sure that the deficit of 177 billion projected then was not inflated to allow for a “saving” (11 billion as it turned out) to finance some of their election sweeteners?”
“The “Prospects for the UK economy” makes a premise that GDP growth will be in excess of 3% in 2011. This seems a little optimistic to me as I don’t recall annual GDP growing by that sort of figure in the last 5+ years. Consequently plans to reduce the deficit are based on unrealistic figures.”
“What happened to the tax free allowance on small business net profit. We now pay tax on every penny we eventually earn.”
“What I discovered by looking at the UK’s Income and Expenditure calculations is that next year our interest payments on our debts will be £40 billion. This means that almost 25% of Alastair Darling’s borrowings next year will simply service Labours past debts. By borrowing evermore this situation will only get worse.
I also think you should highlight that Gordon’s Brown’s boast of supporting our soldiers is shown to be yet another Labour lie by comparing the Defence Budget £40 Billion with the bill for his favourite quangos which I believe runs at £46 Billion.”
“£8bn of payment by banks for insuring liabilities. How has this been treated. Has the £8bn premium been taken as a reduction in the deficit. If so what provision has been made for losses on the insured liabilities. Not clear from budget speech. In the worst case, applying government’s preferred cash accounting approach (all £8bn taken as revenue in 2009-10 with no provision for loss) it would explain most of the deficit reduction?”