First post-Spending Review poll finds growing support for cuts in principle - and divided blame for yesterday's announcements
By Paul Goodman
IPSOS/Mori has the first post-Comprehensive Spending Review poll out - taken yesterday evening - and it may be worth noting for that reason.
Yesterday's YouGov poll, mostly taken before the CSR, found that blame for the well-trailed defence spending scaleback was fairly evenly divided. 30 per cent of those polled blamed the Coalition, and 34 per cent the last Labour Government.
IPSOS/Mori has similar findings for the package as a whole. 41 per cent believe that the Government has made the right decisions. 38 per cent the wrong ones.
The other main findings are -
"Overall, public acceptance that cuts are needed continues to increase. Two in three people agree that there is a need to cut spending on public services (59%) compared to a third who disagree (32%), giving a net agreement of +27 percentage points. This compares to net agreement in September of +20, and continues the growing acceptance of the need for cuts seen over the last few months.
Confidence that the government's policies will improve the state of the economy in the long term has dropped significantly since before the Spending Review, although is still much higher than any during the Labour administration since mid-2005. Almost half think the Coalition’s policies will improve the state of the economy (48%), compared to 39% who disagree. This compares to 57% who agreed in September and 61% who agreed in June.
Many people remain concerned about the speed of the cuts. Two-thirds of the public would prefer that spending is cut more slowly to reduce the impact on public services (68%) than think it is important to cut spending quickly (27%). This is broadly in line with findings since the election."
There's also strong support for ending child benefit for higher income earners (71%) and reducing welfare spending (61%).
The full findings can be read here.
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