The ongoing Greek negotiations with Europe, and the recent comments from the Scottish National Party, bring the topic of austerity into the forefront. But they talk about austerity as if it were a policy of choice. It is not. Austerity, far from being a policy is, in fact, an outcome.
It is the direct result of poor management of the nation's finances. It is a position that governments get into because they failed to manage their economy properly; failed to tackle waste and corruption; and made poor policy decisions spending the public's money. Any household with tight finances knows only too well that cutting back on expenditure is not a choice but a necessity. That household also knows that the answer to tight finances will never be "spend more!"
Austerity related policy decisions come about by deciding where to spend what little money we have, and how we prioritise our public services. But austerity does not drive every policy decision. Benefits, for example, needed to be reformed for a whole raft of reasons. Having spoken recently with Kidderminster's Job Centre Plus, I learn that universal credit cannot be rolled out fast enough - it is a pragmatic and forward thinking solution to an old problem.
With our health system, the government has not just ring fenced the NHS budget - it has increased expenditure. The recent row about a 'crisis' in the NHS would lead people to believe that the NHS was in meltdown. It is certainly the case that A+E targets were not being met, but at the worse point 9 out of ten A+E patients were admitted, treated and discharged (or moved to further treatment) in under four hours (the target is 19 out of 20). Whilst it is right to be self-critical and set ourselves standards of excellence that we aspire to, it is also right to occasionally look at what the rest of the world sees. The international Commonwealth Fund survey of the top 11 developed nations found the English NHS to be the best in the world in terms of patient care, patient outcomes, and patient satisfaction. Importantly, this survey has seen England come top as a direct result of changes over the last five years. This is in marked contrast to the Welsh NHS.
So it is worth remembering, we didn't choose austerity, but we chose where to spend the little money we have.