Tory austerity ‘has cost UK half a trillion pounds of public spending since 2010’

Thinktank says 2010-2019 spending would have been £540bn higher had previous plans been stuck to

A decade of austerity by the Conservative-led governments after 2010 resulted in more than half a trillion pounds of lost public spending and a weaker economy, a left-of-centre thinktank has calculated.

The Progressive Economy Forum said that had state spending continued at the pace before David Cameron became prime minister, it would have been £91bn higher by 2019 – enough to cover the entire education budget in that year.