Critically analyze how successful the British government's use of Essay - 2

Critically analyze how successful the British government's use of Spending Reviews has been as a way of making government more - Essay Example This essay seeks to critically analyze the success of British government in using spending review in the execution of government strategies. The labor government has been using spending reviews from 1998 to the year 2007 to set out spending plans. The departmental expenditure limits (DELs) covers the predictable spending of the government. This includes spending on hospitals and schools. Annually managed expenditure (AME) covers the public elements that are driven by demand. Examples include debt interests and social security spending. The spending review cover three years but they occur annually. The last year of a spending review is subject to reassessment in preparation to the next spending review period. The labor government increased spending which necessitated tight spending plans between the April 2008 and March 2011. According to the treasury, the public spending was expected to fall. The fiscal projections indicated that tax receipts were set to be increase over the active t hree year period. This was the only way to meet the borrowing forecasts of government (Corsetti & Muller 2009). In the previous four years, the labor government had increased public spending. The British government predicted that total managed expenditure (TME) would be ?587 billion in the period between 2007 and 2008. This was considered the broadest measure of the government expenditure. The amount was equated to roughly 43 percent of the British national income (Floud & Johnson 2004). The previous year, just before the labor government came to power, the government has spent roughly 41 percent of the national income. This was between 1996 and 1997. This represented roughly a 2 percent increase of the national income in the gross public spending (Hills & Stewart 2009). This is equivalent to ? 28 billion in the 2007 terms. For the first two years in office, the labor government maintained the conservative spending plan. This was in accordance to their manifesto promise from 1997 to 1999. During that period, there was s robust economic performance and the public spending was seen to decline with regard to national income. The labor government based its spending plans on the comprehensive spending review prepared for the year 1998. This was buoyed by the spending reviews from 2000 to 2004. This was later affected by the economy-wide inflation which was also referred to as real terms. There was significant departmental under spending. As a result the economic performance was resilient between 1999 and 2000. The 2007 march budget increased the education spending to 77 billion pounds (Hills & Stewart 2009). This was equated to 2 percent annual average in real terms. The increment was seen to be slower than the education spending. In the overall, it was still a cut. However, this increment was expected to grow from 1999 to 2008. Over the same period of time, the average increment was 5.5 percent annually in real terms (Floud & Johnson 2004). The plans of education spending led to a spending fall in the national income (Giudice & Kuenzel 2012). The labor government manifesto had committed to increase education spending in the 2005 election. During the period the labor government remained in power, the spending increment in education sector was supposed to be maintained. However, this had an impact in the ability of the British government to deliver on other aspects of education in the United Kingdom (Corsetti & Muller 2009). The 2006