Comprehensive Spending Review 2021: A Joint Representation from the UK Women’s Budget Group

This a joint response from the UK Women’s Budget Group, Maternity Action and the End Violence Against Women Coalition (EVAW). We welcome HM Treasury’s commitment to hearing the views of civil society ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR).

Summary

• The Covid-19 pandemic saw the Government recognise the need to do things differently, this included significant public spending which must not be seen as a one-off. Instead the Government must commit to increase long-term public spending, which is the most effective way to ‘level up’. Central to this, is investing in public infrastructure like child and adult social care, which is just as essential as investment in physical infrastructure. It must also include significant investment to tackle the climate emergency.
• The need to reform the social care sector is long overdue. A high-quality care service requires investment of £28bn[1] per year over above the current spending but would produce 2.7 times as many jobs as an equivalent investment in construction[2].
• Investing in the broken childcare sector must be central to the Government’s plans to ‘level up’. Childcare spending in England should be increased to £15.5bn per year, an investment that would pay for itself through increased employment in the childcare sector itself, as well as indirect and induced employment from multiplier effects.
• Covid-19 has seen the epidemic of violence against women worsen. Strategic investment to deal with this the current crisis, as well as for prevention, is urgently needed.

Read our CSR representation here.

[1] UKWBG (2021) Government’s announced plan will not “fix social care once and for all” – we need a free universal social care system WBG-response-to-gov-social-care-plans-FINAL.pdf

[2] De Henau, Jerome & Himmelweit, S. UKWBG (2020) A Care-Led Recovery from Coronavirus Care-led-recovery-final.pdf (wbg.org.uk)