According to an Institute for Fiscal Studies study ahead of the last election, Britain had the second highest rate of increase in public spending among 28 comparable industrialised countries between 1997 and 2007, and the highest between 2007 and 2010. At 4.4pc a year in real terms (that’s after inflation), it dwarfed the 0.7pc that had occurred during the previous 17 years of Tory rule. These very high levels of public spending became embedded so that, when the economy collapsed, it automatically ratcheted up to an almost unprecedented peace time record of nearly 50pc of GDP. Predictably, all this extra spending was accompanied by steeply falling public sector productivity such that, had levels of productivity inherited in 1997 been sustained, the same amount of public service provision could have been bought for £42.5bn a year less by 2007 than it cost. Alternatively, service provision could have been 16pc higher.