Historical lessons on keeping spending under control

"Controlling Spending and Government Deficits - Lessons from History and International Experience"(PDF)

Authors: Dr Andrew Lilico, Ed Holmes and Hilba Sameen

Publication date: 23 November 2009

A comprehensive study contrasting historical UK examples when spending was cut during times of financial hardship with the similar experiences of other European countries and Canada. The paper calls for a spending cuts programme to address the dire state of the current UK public finances. However the authors warn that other countries have been better than Britain at implementing public cuts programmes by devolving the process of finding savings down to the government departments in question and is critical of previous centralised cuts programmes undertaken by the UK Government.