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.