My UK Budget

My UK Budget

Cuts, cuts, cuts. It’s become the talk of the nation what should and shouldn't be cut, how the people of the nation are having to suffer, how poor the government is; well have you ever wondered what you would do if you had the power to control the UK budget? Well I have, here are my thoughts.

The Ministry of Defence are currently at a budget of £39bn. It is my aim to increase that amount by £7bn; therefore allowing this department to have a budget of £46bn. My reasons for this are that the ministry of defence have been noted to have very little budget to supply the right equipment and training for our troops and armed forces. The Defence Committee Third Report reported their concern over the cuts in the defence science and technology research budget. It is my fear that the equipment are being prevented to grow and develop into weapons and medical aids that could prove to be useful in battle and in saving lives; if this happens we are in great danger of failure for the future UK defence cabilities, combatants and equipment. There is also a fear that equipment is at a risk of being under funded putting our troops at risk. Fist Sea Lord and Chief of Naval also noted that Defence of Ministry did not have enough money and were in a future for tough decisions. The fact that this department was not getting enough money for equipment is evident in the statistics that they overspent their budget by £6.5bn. My idea of an increase of £7bn will prevent overspending happening and will allow the Ministry of Defence to be fully equipped. One of the main goals of the Ministry of Defence is to supply the correct equipment, allowing them to do that with extra money will help them achieve their main goals and open up opportunities for the development of future equipment and human minds of technology. 

However, allowing the ministry of defence to have extra money when most of our troops are being moved out of Afghanistan may be considered as a waste of time and a waste of money; if our troops are going to be fighting less why give them more when they should be getting cuts? They have often been criticised in the past for poor management of finances which have forced past prime ministers to introduce cuts such as Gordon Brown in 2009. It is a concern of mine that extra money will encourage them to overspend or will mislead them to thinking the have a lot more money to spend and do not need to budget as much. We don’t their bad budget skills to get worse!

Britain's MOD

Educations, as a department, are on a budget of £91bn; I would like to increase that amount by just £1bn. I had a little debate myself as to whether they should get an increase at all. This may come as a surprise as education is the factor to enable our economy to grow. However, the government are aware of that and have made it one of the departments to protect form costs; despite all this I still feel it is in need of some money as it has been suffering some cuts. There have been some big cuts in the infrastructure side of education and 81% was cut as a result of the scrapping Building schools for Future programme. This has caused there to be limited space for children entering primary school. More money will help the development of new schools and will allow children to be put in the best suited primary school for them rather than being put into anyone that just has the space. A downside on increasing the budget for education is that it may not be completely necessary as I have mentioned before they are the most protected from cuts and are managing.

Children not being able to do the above due to cuts?

Health is also another department protected by the government and have only suffered a small amount of cuts therefore I would like to keep the budget the same at £130bn. My decision is based on the increases the department has been granted, such as: a rise on PESA by 0.02% and% in Resource DEL. I am also concerned about where all the NHS money is being spent as results show some money for the NHS are not being channelled through the department of health, or DEL are overspending. Either way I cannot allow extra money to be spent on a department where the spending of the Budget is not clear. However, I am not willing to make any cuts due to the cuts they have already been suffering: 1% in dental services and 11.2% in Capital DEL.

To supply the money for Ministry of Defence and Education I have cut the welfare budget of £8bn, giving them a total of £199bn. My cut are manly directed at the job seekers allowance (which had been increased by 7.58%) in order to encourage them to start working fast and help contribute to the economy; this may increase the percentage of those at work and prevent citizens from getting out of work. On the other hand this may make life very difficult for the families with parents on job seekers allowance and may even cause parents to take from their child’s benefits causing the young generation to be robbed of their rights.

Wishful thinking! Well it can't harm anyone and it certainly gets my point across so why not? I don't wish to offend anyone with my decisions and am happy to respond to any comments as I love a debate! So please feel free to put your points across!

What do you think?