There is no such thing as a ‘free’ government service

Scotland’s ‘Yes’ campaign is obsessed with ‘free’ childcare. But it’s not free, it’s funded by taxpayers.

Is there a word more abused in the English language than free'?

Even if you just stick to the financial use of the word, the list of its misuse is never-ending. There are the BOGOF offers in supermarkets. There are the free' gifts given out by companies as incentives to buy.

I write in the magazine this week about the providers of a new with-profits fund who are giving out free' M&S vouchers to those who buy in yet itsannual fee comes in at around 1.5% a year, compared to a nice tracker for under 0.2% and the top performing Baillie Gifford managed fund for 0.4%.

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But the most maddening use of the word free at the moment comes from the 'Yes' campaign in the Scottish referendum. The Twitter account run by Yes Scotland is a particular culprit.

Here are a few samples.

"Independence gives Scotland powers to help families, enabling us to tackle rising energy bills and increase free childcare."

"With a Yes we can deliver a huge increase in free childcare for Scotland, to help mums like Amy."

"A Yes means we can deliver a transformational shift in free childcare, saving families thousands a year."

"With Yes, we can deliver better jobs and qualitypublic services like more free childcare for Scots families."

You get the picture.

The Yes campaign are obsessed with childcare (it's all about getting the female vote) but they also endlessly confuse free' with taxpayer-funded'. This really matters.

All spending comes with opportunity cost so when a government decides that a service will be entirely taxpayer-funded, another service has to be less taxpayer-funded. It's all about choices.

So free' university places in Scotland actually mean fewer university grants to children from poor families in Scotland.

Free' prescriptions mean less spent on the NHS in other areas in Scotland (might this be why I have waited three months for a letter telling me when I might get a hospital appointment for my son?)

And more free childcare' will mean cutbacks in some other areas (assuming the SNP doesn't actually have a money tree).

Using the word free suggests that there is no opportunity cost that no choices have to be made. That's just not true. The savings of thousands to some families mentioned above are costs of thousands to other families. There is no such thing as a free' government service.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.