'There is no more money' while billions of pounds in tax is unpaid

That is what SNP health secretary, Humza Yousaf, told Scottish NHS workers who are about to go on strike for a better pay deal.

What he said was: “There is no more, nada, zilch, nothing.”

“There is no magic money tree,” Theresa May, when Prime Minister, told nurses in 2017 when they asked for a pay rise after years of a 1% cap.

“I’m afraid there is no more money” went the famous note from Liam Byrne, Labour’s chief secretary, to his successor when the party left office in 2010 and the parade of five Tory Prime Ministers in 12 years began.

We are once again hearing calls for pay rises and every week seems to bring a new round of strikes as workers and employers are poles apart in negotiations.

The bottom line is workers are asking for a pay rise to reflect the rocketing cost of living and governments are replying “there is no more money”.

Throughout the years, governments of all shades tell us there is no more money.

Where these words hit home and hit hardest is in communities where the absence of funding leaves facilities shut and people vulnerable, cold and hungry.

The money the UK Treasury brings in eventually finds its way, well some of it does, to frontline services.

But when the axe falls it is these services that feel the edge of the cold, sharp steel.

This week Glasgow City Council has had to tell dozens of community groups, who had pinned their hopes on funding from the Communities Fund that they have been unsuccessful in their application for cash.

The council, while spending £16.5m on the fund this year allocating cash to more than 200 organisations, does not have enough to meet the demand.

Almost 450 groups applied for funding, with the amount applied for reaching more than £130m over three years.

Simply put, the City Treasurer might as well say “there is no more money”.

There is certainly not enough to go around.

It has knocked back 73 groups including 21 that were previously funded, and who rely on it to continue their work.

This year the council was facing a £120m budget shortfall, the biggest ever.

It will likely reduce before the Budget is announced next month, but the warning is still that even if it can be halved, it will be the biggest ever.

The council gets the vast majority of its money from the Scottish Government, which has for years cut council funding to focus on other priorities.

The Scottish Government gets much of its money, but not all as it raises its own taxes too, from the UK Government.

The UK Government gets its money from us, the taxpayers, through a multitude of taxes.

Taxes on individuals and businesses, on income, on transactions and almost every time money changes hands a slice of it goes to the Government through HMRC, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.

But not everyone is paying what they should.

It has been revealed, by a House of Commons committee, that there is £45bn in uncollected tax, lost to the country.

HMRC collected £731.1bn in the last year, the highest amount ever.

If we are collecting record amounts in tax how come ‘there is no more money’?

But, that aside, the committee found around 5% of tax due is not collected every year.

For context, when the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, announced his spending review last year he said that there needs to be £54bn in cuts/savings to balance the Budget.

Maybe add to the £45bn in unpaid tax the £4.5bn the Civil Service was estimated to have lost in Covid funding fraud and errors, and we are almost quits.

Now, Rishi Sunak, Prime Minister, wants every child to study maths until they are 18.

Well, you could ask a primary school pupil and their arithmetic would tell you that if we collected all the tax that was due then the current shortfall would be a lot less than it is.

Question: If Jeremy needs 54 billion apples and there are some people/businesses holding back 45 billion apples, who is being greedy?

Some people will still find a way to tell you the answer is the nurses, teachers, train workers and others asking for a pay rise.

But they are worth a watch, and maybe even a tax audit too.