Max Warner

1. New Treasury stats out today suggest that departments made significant efficiencies and savings in 2025–26. They report savings of 4.1% from ‘efficiency, savings, and productivity’, well above the 2024 Autumn Budget target of 2%. What should we take from these figures? 🧵

This is especially important as budgets going forward rely on continued efficiency improvements. If these gains continue, public spending pressures would be eased. If growth cannot be sustained, services will either be worse than planned or need budget top-ups.

1. New Treasury stats out today suggest that departments made significant efficiencies and savings in 2025–26. They report savings of 4.1% from ‘efficiency, savings, and productivity’, well above the 2024 Autumn Budget target of 2%. What should we take from these figures? 🧵

What does this mean going forward? If these efficiency gains prove to be real and permanent, public services will be able to deliver better services within existing spending plans in future years – unambiguously good news.

1. New Treasury stats out today suggest that departments made significant efficiencies and savings in 2025–26. They report savings of 4.1% from ‘efficiency, savings, and productivity’, well above the 2024 Autumn Budget target of 2%. What should we take from these figures? 🧵

If you take them at face value, today’s figures imply around £9bn of efficiencies were made in 25-26. This would be very high – plans for the following 3 years aim to make £13bn of efficiencies by 28-29. And even those plans are ambitious relative to the historic average.

1. New Treasury stats out today suggest that departments made significant efficiencies and savings in 2025–26. They report savings of 4.1% from ‘efficiency, savings, and productivity’, well above the 2024 Autumn Budget target of 2%. What should we take from these figures? 🧵

We have a new report out today taking a deep dive into how migration and its fiscal impacts feed through the OBR’s public finance forecast. A short thread on why this matters [1/9]

We make a number of recommendations that we think could improve the transparency of the OBR process, and in some cases, its accuracy. It’s a complex and nuanced topic, so I highly recommend reading the full report if you are interested. ifs.org.uk/publications... [8/9]

We have a new report out today taking a deep dive into how migration and its fiscal impacts feed through the OBR’s public finance forecast. A short thread on why this matters [1/9]

Given its fiscal and economic impacts, migration is an important component of the OBR’s forecasts. It is very possible that changes in migration could play a role in the amount of ‘headroom’ the government has against its fiscal rules at this Budget. [6/9] bsky.app/profile/nick...

We have a new report out today taking a deep dive into how migration and its fiscal impacts feed through the OBR’s public finance forecast. A short thread on why this matters [1/9]

Lots of this has been driven by big changes in immigration policy in the last 6 years, including policies like the visa route for Hong Kongers in 2020, restrictions on international student routes in 2023 and restrictions on Skilled Worker visas in 2025 [4/9]

We have a new report out today taking a deep dive into how migration and its fiscal impacts feed through the OBR’s public finance forecast. A short thread on why this matters [1/9]

There have been large changes in estimates of both immigration and emigration in recent years, with a large rise and subsequent fall in net migration, the difference between the two. Latest Home Office visa data suggests immigration estimates could continue to fall [2/9]

Early last year, Wes Streeting and NHS England declared a ‘fundamental reset’ of the NHS financial regime. In a new @theifs.bsky.social comment, funded by @nuffieldfoundation.org, we show that a big NHS budget top-up was avoided in 25-26. So how was this achieved and what does it mean going forward?

But given ambitious targets for improving NHS performance over this parliament, the government may face a choice between revising down expectations for performance improvements or increasing budgets for the coming years above current plans [11/12]

Early last year, Wes Streeting and NHS England declared a ‘fundamental reset’ of the NHS financial regime. In a new @theifs.bsky.social comment, funded by @nuffieldfoundation.org, we show that a big NHS budget top-up was avoided in 25-26. So how was this achieved and what does it mean going forward?

Hospitals also slowed down their activity and staffing growth to stick within budgets. This is consistent with the NHS having stronger financial ‘grip’ on trusts, but also shows the trade-off: all else equal, not topping up budgets will slow down performance improvements. [9/12]

Early last year, Wes Streeting and NHS England declared a ‘fundamental reset’ of the NHS financial regime. In a new @theifs.bsky.social comment, funded by @nuffieldfoundation.org, we show that a big NHS budget top-up was avoided in 25-26. So how was this achieved and what does it mean going forward?

Part of the reason is that the 2024 Spending Review set out more generous planned growth for the NHS than the 2021 Spending Review. Indeed, @benzaranko.bsky.social and I warned in 2021 that top-ups in 24-25 looked likely! All else equal, larger budgets are easier to stick to [7/12]

Early last year, Wes Streeting and NHS England declared a ‘fundamental reset’ of the NHS financial regime. In a new @theifs.bsky.social comment, funded by @nuffieldfoundation.org, we show that a big NHS budget top-up was avoided in 25-26. So how was this achieved and what does it mean going forward?

Where top-ups come from also matters. It's hard to see how the NHS using the Reserve every year meets the criteria of a ‘genuinely unforeseen’ pressure. The Darzi review argued that frequent raids of capital budgets have worsened the NHS estate. [5/12]

Early last year, Wes Streeting and NHS England declared a ‘fundamental reset’ of the NHS financial regime. In a new @theifs.bsky.social comment, funded by @nuffieldfoundation.org, we show that a big NHS budget top-up was avoided in 25-26. So how was this achieved and what does it mean going forward?

Zooming out further, 25-26 was the first year in over a decade that the NHS neither made a claim on the Treasury Reserve (a contingency for unexpected spending pressures) or raided capital budgets to meet frontline pressures [3/12]

Early last year, Wes Streeting and NHS England declared a ‘fundamental reset’ of the NHS financial regime. In a new @theifs.bsky.social comment, funded by @nuffieldfoundation.org, we show that a big NHS budget top-up was avoided in 25-26. So how was this achieved and what does it mean going forward?

We have a comment in the Times today on how yesterday's VAT cut will be paid for. The money has to come from somewhere within departmental budgets, but we don't know what will be squeezed. That's different to the bus fares policy, where more specific cuts have been set out