The Guardian’s view on state failure: Britain’s crisis is not just an investment crisis, but also a maintenance crisis | Editorial

TThe abject failure to release Hadush Kibato, who was serving a prison sentence for sexual assault and is due to be deported from HMP Chelmsford, is a symptom of a wider problem. What disturbs the British state is that it has built, and is still building, what it cannot seem to maintain.

A decade of attrition has hollowed out public services to such an extent that they struggle to function coherently or plan beyond the next crisis. Under the Conservatives, government spending increased by just over 1% a year – well below its long-term trend 2.6% annually. This masks the fact that Britain’s fiscal story since 2010 has been focused on capital spending, which has sent ministers reaching for hard hats, but has not kept the lights on. However, an investment without maintenance is just decay.

Justice Secretary David Lammy right Blame conservatives for failures in state efficiency. Under Tory austerity, prison budgets were cut by a quarter, and a 30% loss of staff devastated the system. As Cassia Rowland of the Institute for Government has observed, the result is a “slow collapse”: a service now staffed largely by overburdened and inexperienced staff. Even if an officer makes a mistake with Kibato, the system does not work. There were 262 misreleases last year – double that in 2023, and four times that in 2014.

The solution proposed by the ministers is to add 14,000 new prison places. These may be necessary, but they will not be sufficient. There may be a need for more prisons, but where is the money to operate them properly? There are indications that Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR)And of all places, I started to realize the problem and change course. Under the Tories, it was a cheese-peeling hotbed. She believed that public investment was a waste of money and that the British economy was operating so efficiently that any spending would lead to higher inflation.

However, in August last year, the Office for Budget Responsibility admitted this Public investment It can pay for itself. And in that March decreased Its previous assumption under the Conservative Party was that there would be no recession in the UK economy. It is crucial, if the economy is not operating at full capacity, as is the case in… Labor MP Jevon Sander He also pointed out that public spending will not replace private spending, but rather will add to the gross product.

The Office for Budget Responsibility was created to remove politics from fiscal policy, but ended up incorporating austerity policies. This was not bad luck, but bad theory. I regularly overestimated the post-crash recovery in productivityproducing forecasts consistent with the narrative that spending cuts and restraint were necessary. Brexit has been bad for the British economy, but it would be a mistake to treat productivity solely as a supply-side variable, unaffected by changes. Demand and trust.

Academics believe that investment is the driver productivity. When the crash happened, companies stopped spending and uncertainty has prevailed ever since droning To start again in a meaningful way. Both since 2010 Public and private Capital spending faltered, leaving Britain stuck in a low productivity trap.

If the Office for Budget Responsibility changes course, it could become something more valuable than just a fiscal arbiter. The agency could be the one to determine the cost of understaffed prisons, Clogged hospitals and Councils Can’t handle it. The evidence is hidden in plain sight. When prison authorities don’t even know who should be inside, the real output gap is in society, not in the economy.

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