Dawlish Discussion

13.2 million votes just lost......

Welfare bill £343 billion

Overseas aid £13 billion

Illegal immigrant £8 billion 

But lets go for the pensioners......

Also the 17.4 million who voted to leave the EU.

The annual cost of obesity; £126 billion.  http://nesta.org.uk http://frontier-economics.com

Annual cost of smoking; £44.8 billion. http://ash.org.uk

Annual cost of alcohol; £27.44 billion. http://liveruk.org https://www.ias.org.uk/report/the-costs-of-alcohol-to-society/

£198 billion is not spent on issues caused by obesity, smoking and alcohol.

The estimated cost is around £1.5 billion after subtracting taxes raised from alcohol and tobacco duties.

@Steve oh yeah where did you get that figure from?

From ChatGPT. Where did you get yours from?

Negative net costs indicate that duty revenue exceeds the NHS and social care expenditure included in this calculation.
## Sources
Frontier Economics/Nesta 2025 estimate, quoted by DHSC.
Frontier Economics/Nesta 2025 estimate for obesity-related social care.
ASH 2025 estimate.
Earlier Landman Economics estimate of local authority social care costs, excluding informal care.
Institute of Alcohol Studies estimate for 2021/22.
Institute of Alcohol Studies estimate for English social services in 2021/22.
HMRC receipts for 2025/26.
OBR estimate for 2025/26.
Office for Budget Responsibility

@Steve Duckduckgo Search Assist. It doesn't function in the same way as Chat GPT being a search summarizer, whereas Chat GPT is more interactive and prone to reflecting the users views through the algorithm. I'm not claiming DDG is perfect but it is largely open source. There are also far more ethical  concerns over Chat GPT's use.

"Most of the limitations of ChatGPT are found in the generated texts, such as hallucinations, originality, and toxicity. Although the quality of ChatGPT responses has improved significantly over previous chatbots, it is still inevitably to produces erroneous, biased and discriminatory, offensive and Plagiarized texts. With ChatGPT's widespread application in various fields, it is highly likely to integrate into every aspect of our lives in the future. Therefore, the impact of these limitations cannot be underestimated, such as the disruption of the knowledge dissemination ecosystem caused by erroneous texts, the influence of biased and discriminatory texts on social fairness, and so on. In addition, ChatGPT's limitations in privacy data and sustainability determine whether this technology can safely develop in real life, increasing people's productivity rather than bring new troubles. Besides, we have explored potential research directions for ChatGPT in terms of technology, applications, and ethics."

https://direct.mit.edu/dint/article/6/1/201/118839/The-Limitations-and-Ethical-Considerations-of

That's why I asked it to provide sources. Other sources tend to agree on the ballpark figures.

Where did your £200 billion figure come from?

NHS spend: £200 - £220 billion.

Welfare spend: £350 billion.

If your figures are correct then the UK has a very serious obesity, smoking and alcohol problem. 😂

@Steve the UK has one of the highest obesity rates in Western Europe. Obesity leads to an increased risk of many of chronic health conditions, including Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, musculoskeletal disorders, several types of cancer and depression and also covid. Smoking and high alcohol consumption also increase the risk of many of illnesses. Alcohol has implications linked to Policing and anti-social behaviour too. 

If people want to smoke, drink and eat junk food excessively, and to the point it negatively impacts their health whilst doing no exercise at all, then they should contribute more to cover the additional costs and pressure on the NHS. Or they should be made to take out private health care. Or drink, cigarettes and crap nutritionally poor food should be highly taxed and in some cases banned. 

There are too many people blaming others for the state of the nation when they, the companies selling this crap take no responsibility, expecting other tax payers to foot the bill when someone gets cancer or need an operation that would have been avoidable. Anti-smoking campaigns have been pretty successful in meaning the UK is well below the European average but why should a smoker get free health care? We need a campaign to improve the population's health and help them quit their addictions.

I'm more than happy to knock £200 billion off the NHS and welfare bill.

Those that choose to take risks should take out private insurance. Others shouldn't have to pay for it.

@Steve Yes, it's about personal responsibility. Private health insurance on top of a statutory service like in Germany is an option. 

NHS ENGLAND BUDGET 2025/26

Total DHSC Budget: £216.6 billion
NHS Resource (day-to-day) Budget: £203.4 billion
NHS Capital Budget: £13.6 billion
Per-person cost (England): ~£3,492

RESOURCE BUDGET BREAKDOWN

• Revenue departmental expenditure (excl. depreciation): £198,095 million

• Depreciation and impairments: £4,868 million

• Revenue annually managed expenditure: £3,000 million

• Technical accounting and budgeting: £2,000 million

• Total resource use limit: £207,963 million

CAPITAL BUDGET BREAKDOWN

• System-level operational investments: £4.9bn

• Previously committed funds: £1.1bn

• National capital programme investments: £4.1bn
  (includes £1.65bn for constitutional standards recovery
  and £596m for technology transformation)

GROWTH CONTEXT

• Cash increase vs 2024/25: 5.3%

• Real-terms increase vs 2024/25: 2.6%

• Long-term historical average real growth: 3.7%

• Gap vs trend: ~£37bn (18%) lower in cash terms than
  longer-term trend would predict

SPENDING REVIEW 2025 OUTLOOK (to 2028/29)

• DHSC revenue budget growth: £202bn to £232bn (2.7% avg real growth)

• Capital spending: £13.6bn to £14.6–15.2bn by 2029/30

• Maintenance and repair: £30bn over five years
  (over £5bn for most critical repairs, incl. RAAC removal by 2035)

• Technology and transformation: £10bn over three years