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increase the actual expenditure substantially. The assumptions are otherwise conservative in that, while providing for improved standards in the educationa and health services, and over 600,000 more subsidised houses, they do not allow for new services or for improvements in the scope and amount of pension and other National Insurance benefits.
Other assumptions could have produced a smaller increase in total expenditure: for example, a slower intake of teachers, with consequently less increase in the cost per child; a slower development of the National Health Service, both in current and in capital cost; an increase of rents which would make possible a reduction of subsidies both on new and on existing houses; a reorganisation of grants to local authorities which would reduce the Exchequer's share of increases in expenditure. It would there- fore seem possible, if decisions were taken sufficiently early, to prevent as rapid a growth of expenditure as the estimates would indicate.
December, 1955
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