How often do we see this – a minister throwing up their hands and saying that the only thing that can be done to improve public services is to tax the public more and spend more money?
This is a falsehood. Government has long since forgotten their responsibilities and accountability for their actions. Our sclerotic and inefficient public ‘services’ are about to have a reckoning when the public purse is wrung dry and the economy falters under the yoke of Labour’s so called ‘growth’ policies.
People employed through the public purse
As of December 2025, there were an estimated 6.19 million people employed in the public sector in the United Kingdom which is around 23% of total employment. Of this, 60% was spent on the NHS, although of the 1.37 million people employed by the NHS (which routinely does not include GPs), only approximately 739,415 of them were medically qualified clinical staff. Likewise, as a proportion of the public sector wage bill, only 136,960 are regular service members from the three armed services. It should be borne in mind, though, that these are not all fighting forces, they also have their own cooks, transport, administration and so on.
Add the employment number from the public purse to the 1.87 million unemployed with the nearly 9 million of employment age ‘economically inactive’ (including students and long term sick) of a total of 43 million of working age, this means that there is a rapidly reducing number of people able to be net contributors, while there is an expanding number of people recruited to deliver public services. Many taxpayers only have the NHS (if they can get an appointment), national road and rail infrastructure and rubbish disposal to show for their contributions through PAYE.
The scariest £ numbers
£383.9 billion was spent on ‘Social Protection’ (welfare), which dwarfs the health budget at £241.8 billion. In total, public expenditure was £1,370 trillion in 2025-26, representing about 45% of national income (GDP), equivalent to around £48,000 per household. For context, this government spending is well over the GDP of the Türkiye and a little less than the GDP of South Korea. The current state of public debt is a much larger topic, over and above that.
(Prime) Ministerial Accountability – or lack of
No sooner had the public wearied of the Labour government having spent nearly two years blaming the previous government for all ills, than Kier Starmer warned us in a press conference recently that he would henceforth be blaming the lack of accountability domestically on global headwinds generally and specifically the conflict with Iran.
We should have been prepared for this, as he was elected despite not even making a pretence at the general election that he had any plan for governing. This is not an isolated case though – we have become used to an absence of accountability from our political classes at least since Tony Blair was in power.
This goes back to years of devolution – not specifically, but definitely including, devolved governments and mayoralties. More broadly this has been due to a delegation of powers to quangos that have been indignantly justified as ‘localising more accountability’ whilst driving up the cost of the various strands of public service while making it bigger and less efficient. Add in Police and Crime Commissioners which are locally elected but seem to have either no power or ultimate power depending on how much they agreed with the powers-that-be.
This column has extensively referred to a lack of a plan for anything over many months – how about an energy or a defence strategy etc.? However, encouraging the lack of such a holistic approach, government has consistently applauded itself for raising more and more taxes to spend increasing amounts on its own priorities, whatever they are.
This situation can be felt by the taxpayer rather than it being communicated openly by government. These priorities can be as defined by manifesto commitments, or opposite to those commitments, on the basis that everything has changed, so the ruling party may safely ignore all pledges previously made or claimed to be bound by them no matter what, depending on what is convenient. The whole point of having a strategy is that it remains broadly the same, but delivery of it flexes to suit changing conditions.
Is it not time for the public to ask some fundamental questions: do we share Westminster’s fundamental, usually unspoken priorities? And: beyond the gargantuan sums raised and spent, does the raising and spending of these sums actually have an effect we recognise in our daily lives and which we feel is worth it?
One example is the NHS – despite larger and larger sums being spent on it, little has changed to allow better access to primary medical care or to better health outcomes. There is little to show for the amounts of money spent, except to avoid worsening problems caused by inefficiency and bureaucracy by adding more of both.
A second is defence spending – ministers have picked up on President Trump’s demand that NATO spend more on their own defence, which has given rise to repeated references to increased amounts as a percentage of GDP. But no timelines have been put to such an initiative and, more fundamentally, there has been no effort applied to define what we expect of our armed forces and to invest, mindful of a cost-effective capability to ensure that that such expenditure represents value and effectiveness.
Further, the treasury in the last few days is suggesting defence cuts, despite the current armed conflicts and implications on government’s preparedness to fulfil its primary function – to protect the public. This is disconnected from reality and from public opinion.
While the previous examples show a lack of oversight, accountability and consideration of value for money, there are still more that simply pass responsibility around until everyone involved is dizzy – and the public are still none the wiser as to who is responsible.
The layered, built-in obfuscation is no more clear than the response to the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a woman. That definition was never in doubt by voters, but the public sector implemented changes which the Supreme Court ruled contradicted the law as it had currently stood. Having been thus corrected, it was reasonably expected that the effect would be felt immediately. Indeed, if that had been a ruling against a private sector business, no doubt it would have felt the full force of the state on the basis that ignorance of the law (whether contrived or not) is no defence.
The public sector is made up of many individuals, most dedicated and rightly proud of their valuable contributions to society but despite these being the majority, it seems though that the entire public sector, having acted on its collective initiative against existing law, is still waiting for the government to confirm guidance, which in turn is issued (but not published) by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), pending approval and issuance by Bridget Phillipson, the Secretary of State responsible. So, (apparently because Bridget Phillipson does not agree with the law on this issue or the judgement), one year later, the correction has still not been implemented. So we are ruled by the minority, just don’t ask who is responsible…….
Other examples are: Non-crime hate incidents, grooming gangs, puberty blockers for children, Post Office scandal; all illustrations of the state’s apparatus, including unaccountable quangos, acting on their own initiative in examples of misconduct and illegality where ordinary citizens would be jailed by the merest association to such wrongdoing – but in these cases and so many others, nobody is held responsible. The most definitive consequence, although laughably trivial, was Paula Vennells returning a CBE – an extraordinary award to an individual who should not have been awarded one simply for doing her job as head of a quango – but she indeed failed to do even that but received one anyway.
In this week, while the relatively straightforward case of a ministerial department (FCDO) and the Prime Minister locked in a dispute over who is to blame over the appointment of Peter Mandelson, we must be glad there is no quango involved, no public inquiry required or someone to have to write a recommendation to see what is absolutely clear to the average voter.
We, the taxpayers and the majority of the public service, fund government and please may we have value for money, integrity and accountability for effectiveness in ministerial responsibility and execution?