How will Oxford be affected by the cuts?
Given the high proportion of Oxford people employed in the public sector (education, health-care and other services), Oxford is likely to be hit hard. But we will be hit as service-users as well as workers. Oxfordshire NHS is set to cut at least 1,900 jobs in the next few years. The County Council has to find deep cuts in spending on education and social care services. It has already lifted the cap on charging the elderly and disabled for social care. A possible indication of the kind of thing to come is the closure over the summer of a centre for the homeless, the Gap in Park End Street, as the City Council, County Council and NHS withdrew funds.
How will they affect people on low incomes?
Very badly. A study by Howard Reed and Tim Horton estimates that cuts in public services on the scale proposed in the 2010 Emergency Budget will add up to the equivalent of a more than 20% cut in real income for those in the poorest 10% as compared with a less than 2% cut for the richest 10%. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that the new reforms to tax and cash benefits announced in this Budget hit the poorer harder, as a proportion of income, than the better off. These measures hit the poorest, for example, by changing the rules on the indexation of benefits and putting a cap on Housing Benefit.
Is the north of of England losing out?
The Reed-Horton study also did an analysis of the regional impact (within England) of the cuts in public services spending announced in June 2010. It estimated that, relative to income, the cuts in public services will hit the North and the Midlands hardest (though London is likely to be hardest hit in absolute terms). This study only focuses on cuts to public services, moreover, and doesn’t factor in the cuts to cash benefits. I suspect that doing so would accentuate the regional disparity we see rather than reduce it.
Should we have ring-fenced the NHS, or will this simply exacerbate problems elsewhere?
With respect, this is the wrong question. The key question is why the government thinks we should cut the deficit mainly through spending cuts and not through extra tax. The fairest way of sharing the load of paying off the deficit (‘we’re all in it together’) is through the tax system, because one readily calibrate the tax so that the better off carry a proportionately heavier load. By contrast, putting the emphasis on spending cuts almost inevitably shifts the burden onto the more vulnerable in society.
