Budget concerns

DR ANDREW Goudie, the Scottish Government's senior economist, estimates that the country's public expenditure budget will be squeezed by £42 billion over the next 16 years before it will return to its 2009-10 level (your report, 8 July).

Surely the point is that public expenditure must never return to such levels?

The ratio between private and public expenditure needs to be rebalanced in favour of the former for sound economic, fiscal, social and moral reasons.

Likewise, much of the reaction to the UK coalition's proposed 25 per cent budget cuts is misplaced. Adjusting for inflation, public expenditure in 2010 equates to about 490bn at 1998 prices, an increase in the Brown/Blair years of precisely 50 per cent in real terms and even of 32 per cent up to 2007 before the effects of the bankers' incompetence took hold.

But do most citizens feel so much better off from such largesse? To cut it by 25 per cent would still leave total public expenditure at 370bn, equivalent to the 2003 level at 1998 prices.

JOHN BIRKETT,

12 Horseleys Park

St Andrews, Fife