Comprehensive spending review: what is the £83bn?

George Osborne has to cut £83bn on Wednesday, according to reports . But is that figure right? We asked Gemma Tetlow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies to tackle that big number for us. It's from the June emergency budget ( table 1.1 of this report , if you're interested) and refers to spending in 2014-15. So, firstly, it's not a cut on what the government spends now - and you can get details of how that breaks down here - it's a cut in future spending. In fact, it's not really £83bn at all. Here's how Gemma explains it: 1 The coalition government has a plan to cut public borrowing over the next few years. They have announced policy measures which mean that in 2014-15 they now expect to borrow £113 billion less than they would have done in the absence of any policy action 2 Their plan to cut borrowing comprises 26% (or £29bn) coming from measures to increase tax revenues and 74% (or £83bn) from measures to cut spending. (£52bn of the spending cut and £21bn of the tax increase was inherited from the previous Labour government.) 3 The government announced in its June Budget that they will cut £11bn from welfare spending by 2014-15. By cutting borrowing over the next few years, the government estimates it will have to spend £10bn less on debt interest payments by 2014-15, which helps to contribute to the overall spending cut. In addition, in May the coalition government announced about £6bn of cuts to departmental budgets this year. Taking out these cuts leaves £54bn more spending cuts to be allocated in the Spending Review (these figures do not sum due to rounding). 4 But all the figures mentioned above are in 2014-15 prices, which makes them sound larger than they really are. It is probably more sensible to convert them into current prices. In today's prices, £54bn equates instead to £49bn . This is the overall spending cut that is to be allocated in the Spending Review on Wednesday. OK, so it's still a lot of money but there's a big difference between £83bn and £49bn. World government data • Search the world's government with our gateway Development and aid data • Search the world's global development data with our gateway Can you do something with this data? Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group • Get the A-Z of data • More at the Datastore directory • Follow us on Twitter