I have no idea who is telling me the truth.

December 2, 2011 3:51 AM

Where can I get a decent breakdown of Government spending and taxation in the UK? In particular, where can I find reliable information about the cost of public workers / pensions.

The various sources I've seen seem inconsistent and contradictory. I've found things like this, this and this, but the figures don't add up for me.

I'm looking for some numbers that haven't been tampered with to prove a political point.

posted by seanyboy to Law & Government (4 answers total)

Channel 4 fact check.
posted by pmcp at 4:12 AM on December 2, 2011

Response by poster: I'm more interested in primary sources. But thanks.
posted by seanyboy at 6:42 AM on December 2, 2011

Best answer: Here's a large PDF with the Treasury's Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses (PESA) 2011.

Found from the national Statistics Office website, there's a lot of useful stuff there if you can sort through it.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) has some pretty neutral analysis of the subject.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 6:52 AM on December 2, 2011

Best answer: So I have two caveats to this answer but am adding it in case it's helpful:

This week's More or Less has a section dealing with public sector pensions and talks about the distortions on both sides of the argument but

a) is of course a secondary source with analysis included, and
b) talks about the cost of and outcome associated with individual pensions rather than as a proportion of government spending
posted by calico at 4:13 AM on December 3, 2011