General Election 2015: 5 surprising facts about parties' spending plans

The SNP will not end austerity
Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP leader, has put ending Tory austerity at the heart of her party's manifesto. According to the IFS, however, all is not quite as it seems.
It says that the SNP will effectively prolongue austerity for another year by softening the blow in the first four years of the next Parliament.
The approach means that Labour is likely to spend significantly more than the SNP on public services over the next Parliament.
The IFS says: "There is considerable disconnect between this rhetoric [the SNP's anti-austerity claims] and their stated plans for total spending, which imply a bigger cut to total spending by 2019-20 than Labour's plans".



The difference between Labour and Tories is biggest for a generation
The IFS has said that there is a bigger difference between the main political parties in fiscal terms than at any point since 1992.
The figures in its analysis are stark. Under Labour Britain's national debt will be £90billion higher than under the Tories.
Labour will raise overall taxes by £12billion, the Tories will cut them by £4billion. Labour will spend £42.8billion more on public services over the next five years, while under the Tories it will still be £2.5billion lower.
Paul Johnson, the head of the IFS, said: "The difference between the parties is bigger than at any time since 1992 in terms of the scale of the differences in terms of where their fiscal rules will take them."



Spending will utimately rise whoever wins the election
Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP will all increase public spending in real terms over the next Parliament, and while it will fall in real terms under the Tories it is still on an upward trajectory.
The IFS said that as the economy grows, public sector pay is likely to rise in line with pay in the private sector. "If you want to keep it flat you have to have really quite big cuts in things you're not protecting," the IFS said.
Under the Tories, total public spending will fall marginally by £2.5billion. Under Labour it will rise by £42billion, the Lib Dems £3billion and the SNP £28billion.

The Tories will spend more on the NHS than Labour
Labour, which is positioning itself as the party which will "save" the NHS, has actually commited to spending less on it than Labour.
The Conservative Party pledged meet a request by NHS chiefs for £8billion extra a year by 2020. Labour has failed to make the same pledge.
The IFS says that a Tory government spending on the NHS will rise by 7 per cent over the next Parliament, compared to 3.7 per cent under Labour.
The IFS says: "This would be, by historical standards, a very tight settlement for the NHS and it would not be surprising if a Labour government were to increase spending by more than this."

Only a change in the law can make the parties tell voters exactly what they're planning
The IFS criticised all the parties for not providing full details of the cuts and tax rises they would have to make to deliver their plans.
It also suggested that only a change in the law to allow the Treasury's Office for Budget Responsibility might force the politicians to be more open with voters about their policies.
The institute said the Tories need to be more forthcoming about how they will raise £5billion from tax avoidance and cut social security by £10billion.
It said Labour has been "considerably more vague" about how much it wants to borrow.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/11558138/General-Election-2015-5-surprising-facts-about-parties-spending-plans.html

From the Torygraph lol

Here's a few nuggets of truth from the actual IFS report...