Ellie Ames 21 October 2024

Reeves urged to promote prevention spending in Budget

Reeves urged to promote prevention spending in Budget image
Image: Martin Suker / Shutterstock.com

The chancellor has been urged to use next week’s Autumn Budget to amend fiscal rules to promote spending on prevention.

The call was made by think-tanks Demos and Institute for Government (IfG), accountancy body CIPFA, and charity the Health Foundation in a letter to Rachel Reeves.

The organisations said they welcomed the new Government’s emphasis on prevention in health, crime and other public services but highlighted the ‘long history of governments making similar promises, only for spending on prevention to become a casualty of pressures on day-to-day budgets and a victim of short-term thinking’.

Demos and the Health Foundation have proposed the creation of a new spending category called ‘Preventative Departmental Expenditure Limits’, which would see prevention sit alongside revenue spending and capital investment.

The IfG has proposed embedding prevention in the public spending framework by using the budget and spending review process to define and ringfence prevention spending.

Meanwhile, CIPFA is working with the Health Foundation to develop a methodology to identify local government spending on prevention.

The organisations said they feared that unless departments were held to account on long-term prevention spending, ‘the Government’s good intentions to promote prevention may once again fall by the wayside’.

SIGN UP
For your free daily news bulletin
Highways jobs

Executive Director – Adult Social Care, Health & Wellbeing

Sefton Borough Council
£131,208 (Hay 1)
Lead with Purpose. Build on Excellence. Shape the Future of Health and Wellbeing in Sefton. Sefton (Metropolitan borough), Merseyside
Recuriter: Sefton Borough Council

Strategic Finance Business Partners (five roles)

Nottingham City Council
up to £80k
Nottingham is a bold, vibrant, and exciting Core City at the heart of the UK, alive with potential and ambition. Nottingham, Nottinghamshire
Recuriter: Nottingham City Council

Director of Finance (Strategy) – deputy S151

Nottingham City Council
up to £125k
Nottingham is a bold, vibrant, and exciting Core City at the heart of the UK, alive with potential and ambition. Nottingham, Nottinghamshire
Recuriter: Nottingham City Council

Customer Specialist

Essex County Council
Up to £25081.00 per annum
Customer SpecialistPermanent, Part Time£25,081 pro rataLocation
Recuriter: Essex County Council

Customer Specialist

Essex County Council
£25081.00 - £27653.00 per annum
Customer SpecialistPermanent, Part Time£25,081 to £27,653 pro rataLocation
Recuriter: Essex County Council
Linkedin Banner