There really isn't a lot of slack in the welfare system unless you're prepared to be very short sighted and go back to "tent city" levels of homelessness. Which is partly why all previous attempts to cut it have failed. Maybe declaring certain areas of high rent off-limits for housing benefit, but then you have to raise the salaries of NHS staff and teachers living in London so they can afford to work there.

Maybe if the Miliband reforms pay off and certain critical things get built and gas prices return to normal, Labour will be able to take credit for lower electricity prices? Unless it's all spent on datacenters, which would be even worse political doom.

Personally I'd go with the "mansion tax" but that requires ignoring the well-connected screaming. They did manage that with VAT on private school fees.

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Urahandystar 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah but the VAT on school fees meant a load of those children had to go to state schools so we ended up paying for it anyway.

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arethuza an hour ago | parent | next [-]

A rough calculation: £8,580 funding per child at state school, ~90,000 less in private schools and in state schools so about £770 million more required for state school funding and this measure is supposed to bring in about £1.7 billion a year...

So it looks like it would pay for itself?

Edit: We don't charge VAT on private healthcare - so charging it on private education looks a bit inconsistent to me.

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cjrp an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Wasn't it something like a 3-4% reduction in private school pupil numbers? And some of those would have ended up homeschooled rather than state.