While I agree with Andrew Haldenby (Letters 15 September 2010) that government spending has to be reined in, it is quite untrue to say that "most public sector costs are in the workforce".
According to HM Treasury*, public sector salaries and pensions cost £169 billion in 2009-10; old age pensions and welfare payments cost £217 billion; and the largest single item - at £281 billion - was money paid to private sector companies.
In other words, private sector businesses receive £1.66 for every £1 spent on public sector salaries or pensions; not only does the government employ one fifth of the workforce directly, it also spends one fifth of Gross Domestic Product on procurement from the private sector.
* See Table 5.3 here
And here's the letter to which I refer:
Doppelgänger
2 hours ago
6 comments:
Which begs the question of why the Hell are the government spending our money on things for us from private companies that we could buy directly? Excepting only defence and law and order and some (a very few) infrastructure capital projects.
L, the sums are insane.
A. It's easy enough to do a bottom-up approach to the six million official public sector workers and conclude that two million are frontline people doing Good Stuff. Let's give them another two million back up staff and ditch two million quangocrats.
B. But £281 billion is such a staggeringly large amount of money to be beyond comprehension. Ignoring £50 billion 'capital' spending and £12 for medicines in NHS, that means spending of over £3,000 per man, woman and child per annum on... what?
C. Assuming the answer to B is 'not much', the other way of looking at it is the average public sector worker is responsible for spending £46,833 on stuff from the 'private sector' each year. Sure, they claim for petrol, use printer paper and cartridges etc, but £46,833 each?
MW - they won't ever let either of us on QT to confont them will they? I'll do them on FS/pensions etc and you can enjoy that. I'll then enjoy you sticking them with their own numbers. Oh joy.
L, are you posting your FS/pensions manifesto over at yours or will you stick it up here?
"that means spending of over £3,000 per man, woman and child per annum on... what?"
Time for an FOI request?
MW I did a possible pensions post for the ASI that they've never used. I'll post it up here in due course - when I can find where I've put it!
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