Method & disclaimer

How costs are counted

• Sign: positive means a policy worsens the Government's fiscal balance (new spending or a tax cut). Negative means it improves it (a tax increase or saving).
• Horizon: four years, broadly 2027/28 to 2030/31, the next Government's first four Budgets. Where a party publishes a different phasing, we use theirs and note it.
• Two views:
  • Total announced counts the full cost of every announced policy, including spending already in Treasury's PREFU 2026 forecasts.
  • New spending beyond current plans subtracts the part already funded in those forecasts, such as health cost pressures. This is the fairer comparison between parties, but it relies on our judgement of what is already in the baseline.
• Sources: each policy is tagged by who costed it: the party, an independent source (Treasury, economists, advocacy groups such as the Taxpayers' Union, or rival parties), or our estimate. By default the site shows party figures only: independent and critic costings are not yet available evenly for every party, so including them by default would penalise parties that attract more critics. Switch to “Incl. independent” to add them. Independent figures are often contested and are labelled with their origin in the notes.
• Uncosted policies count as $0, so totals understate parties with many uncosted pledges.
• Capital spending is shown separately. Some policies are one-off capital (for example infrastructure, or buying an asset such as a bank). Those add to debt but are not ongoing operating costs, so they are excluded by default. Switch “Capital spending” to include them.
• Aspirational pledges (stated as goals, “work towards”, or not in a published party policy) are excluded by default so parties are compared on firm commitments. Switch “Aspirational pledges” to include them.
• No behavioural or economic modelling. We do not model how policies change growth, wages or behaviour beyond what the cited costing assumes.
• Moving target: several parties had not released full fiscal plans at the time of writing. Figures will change.