More Questions

A lot's been made of the Government's "Five Year Plan", mainly centred upon the question of how the measures in the policy document, particularly the commitment to increasing the stock of social housing, can possibly be funded.

The BBC Online article on Brown's statement in the Commons on the matter reports the Conservative concerns on funding and public spending in general, but proceeds to dismiss them by stating that the "Institute of Fiscal Studies said the policy package could be financed from existing budgets".

But that raises a number of other questions. Does it affirm the Conservative claim that all these 'proposals' are simply re-announcements? Are the "existing budgets" even relevant anymore? The Treasury's been notorious for exaggerating growth predictions recently, and the tendency of projects, not least the two supercarriers, to go wildly over-budget, has most likely resulted in dozens of budget rewrites. And that's not to say nothing of the dramatic fall in tax revenue.

Perhaps, then, there should be a special emphasis on the word could.