It has been almost 14 years since the Conservatives took office, prompting a run of administrations characterised by austerity, low growth, Covid cronyism and cementing the UK’s position as the sick man of Europe.
As things stand, tax levels in the UK are at their highest since records began 70 years ago – and are unlikely to come down.
Borrowing also hit £128.4 billion In the 2022-23 financial year, and yet public services are being cut to the bone at a time when the ‘cost to live’ is simply too high for many to afford.
Previous prime ministers, meanwhile, who have left the country to ruin, have managed to secure lucrative post-ministerial jobs, raking in millions in book deals and speaking gigs to keep them well shielded from the wider societal damage they have caused.
It is at times like this when government spending should scrutinised more than ever, and as such, we are running a dossier tracking where all the money goes in a bid to keep tabs.
If we are missing any obvious inclusions, do let us know via Facebook or Twitter. This list includes figures from 2023 and noticeable expenditures in years before then, but do let us know if we have missed anything via Facebook or Twitter.
20th October 2023: Government prepares a “fire sale” of land bought for HS2 north of Birmingham in a bid to prevent future administrations from reviving the plans.
Vast swathes of land is set to be sold off within weeks at a loss of more than £100 million to the taxpayer.
HS2 Ltd, the government-owned company set up to build the project, had bought 2,900 acres of land between Birmingham and Crewe at a cost of £205 million.
Most is agricultural and was bought at a premium under compulsory purchase. It will be sold at market rate or even discounted.
19th October 2023: A startup fund launched by Rishi Sunak during the Covid-19 pandemic invested a whopping £2 million into companies linked to his wife.
The prime minister launched Future Fund in May 2020 to help emerging businesses during the pandemic, despite it being heavily criticised by business leaders at the time, who expressed concern that it would simply create “zombie businesses”.
One person who appears to have done rather well out of the scheme is the PM’s wife, Akshata Murty, who was quite well off to start off with.
6th September 2023: With schools crumbling across the country, the Department for Education headquarters in Westminster managed to bag a whopping £34 million for a refurb.
Gillian Keegan has distanced herself from any involvement in the decision-making process surrounding the refurbishment project, insisting the decision had been made prior to her appointment as a minister and was authorised by the commercial director within the department.
Tell that to our collapsing schools!
Numerous: The Conservative Party’s spend on private jets has been, safe to say, absolutely astronomical.
It was recently revealed that Rishi Sunak took private jet trips costing almost £500,000 in just over a WEEK last year.
And Liz Truss wasn’t any better.
Britain’s shortest-serving Prime Minister may not have lasted long in the top job, but she certainly claimed her fair share of air miles throughout 2022.
Official government figures reveal that the ill-fated figurehead racked-up a bill of almost £2 million on private jets all told.
2nd August 2023: It is revealed that tens of millions of pounds were added to the EU divorce bill after Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget caused sterling to tank.
Treasury documents show that the tax-cutting plan piled an eye-watering £91 million on the UK’s payments to the bloc caused by “foreign exchange movements”.
The UK pays the settlement in euros, meaning the cost of meeting the payments rose sharply due to the hit the exchange rate took.
21st July 2023: Severance payments to ministers’ special advisers reached nearly £3 million over 2022 amid political upheaval in Westminster, with ministers also paid more than £400,000 after job exits.
The last year saw a raft of resignations and sackings, with the turmoil creating a significant bill for the Government in severance payments to special advisers, or spads in Whitehall lingo.
An annual report on special advisers, published on Thursday ahead of summer recess, detailed £2.9 million in severance as part of a total pay bill of £15.9 million between April 2022 and March 2023.
16th June 2023: The government secretly handed an Australian firm a £1.6 billion contract to supply asylum accommodation on barges, The Independent has revealed.
Corporate Travel Management (CTM) was put in charge of the lucrative two-year arrangement in February, weeks before the government revealed it would use a barge as its first offshore accommodation for asylum seekers.
The contract was awarded directly to CTM without a competition, with three vessels in the works so far.
10th May 2023: Taxpayers billed up to £245,000 to cover the cost of Boris Johnson’s Partygate inquiry lawyers.
The former PM is being investigated by MPs over whether he misled them over lockdown parties in Downing Street.
He is facing growing calls to cover the legal costs himself, as the bill for his defence team increased this week for a second time.
The BBC found the Treasury did not sign off the decision to use public money to pay the bill – but it sneaked through anyway.
30th March 2023: Around £21 billion has been lost by the Government due to fraud since the start of the pandemic, according to the National Audit Office (NAO).
The spending watchdog also warned that it was “very unlikely” that most of the taxpayers’ money will be recovered.
10th February 2023: The British government will pay £2.3 billion to the European Union after losing a long-running trade dispute over cheap Chinese imports.
The disagreement over the importation of Chinese textiles and footwear stems back to 2017, when it was claimed the UK had failed to prevent the undervaluing of these goods, letting criminals evade customs duties by making false claims about the clothes and shoes.
In March 2022, the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) found against the UK “on most liability points”, leading to a bill of £2.3 billion with interest payments.
31st January 2023: Brexit is found to be costing the UK’s economy £100 billion a year, The Telegraph revealed.
On the third anniversary of Britain leaving the bloc, the nation’s economy is 4 per cent smaller than it might have been.
Analysis shows business investment in the UK has grown 19 per cent less than the average across G7 economies.
Commenting on the findings, Ana Andrade and Dan Hanson said: “Did the UK commit an act of economic self-harm when it voted to leave the EU in 2016? The evidence so far still suggests it did.”
June 2022: Of the £37 billion budget being allocated to the Covid contact-tracing app, the latest estimates suggest a whopping £29.3 billion of that was actually spent.
According to the NAO, as of June 2022 approximately £25.7 billion had actually been spent on the entire Test and Trace programme, with an estimated lifetime cost of £29.3 billion.
June 2022: It is revealed that the Department for Health & Social Care (DHSC) lost 75 per cent of the £12 billion it spent on personal protective equipment (PPE) in the first year of the pandemic to inflated prices and kit that did not meet requirements – including fully £4 billion of PPE that will not be used in the NHS and needs to be disposed of.
November 2022: Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget cost the country a staggering £30 billion, the independent Resolution Foundation calculates.
The thinktank also says the £30bn figure would have been far higher without the U-turns taken by Jeremy Hunt on the Truss plans, which toppled both the prime minister and chancellor within weeks.
July 2019: After taking over as Prime Minister, Boris Johnson said that the Government would be turbo-charging no-deal Brexit preparations.
The preparations included new Government committees to oversee the process and an additional £2.1 billion in funding to prepare for a no-deal Brexit on 31 October.
This included funding for additional border force officials and to address congestion around ports. Funding was also directed at improvements to customs systems.
Preparations involved automatic registering of businesses for customs purposes, and adjustments to the already announced temporary tariff regime in the event of a no-deal Brexit. In addition, the Government launched the ‘Get Ready for Brexit’ advertising campaign, providing £100 million to fund the campaign.
