Boris Johnson used an accounting trick to leave more than £130 billion worth of spending commitments out of the Tory manifesto costings.
Chancellor Sajid Javid had promised the manifesto would include the "most transparent" working out of any manifesto ever.
But unlike other parties - who need to show their sums for every policy they intend to introduce - the Tories have decided anything announced before the election shouldn't count.
The costings document, published alongside the manifesto yesterday, only does the sums for additional announcements made in the manifesto itself.
It doesn't include things announced before the election was called, even if they won't be paid for until the next Parliament.
And some of the spending promises excluded from the sums were announced in the Sajid Javid's Spending Review - just 81 days ago.
For example: The 20,000 new police officers pledge. It's true that Chancellor has already budgeted £750m extra for the recruitment of the first 6,000 officers in 2019/20.
But there's so far been no confirmation of where the half-a-billion or so a year required to recruit the remaining 14,000 officers will come from.
But even though this money has yet to be announced, and will definitely come out of Government spending in the next four years - if you were hoping to find this out from the costings document, you'd be disappointed. Because it isn't in there.
The pledge is, however, referenced at least twice in the manifesto document.
Announcements the Tories have made since July 2019, but haven't been included in the costing document include:
- £750m to recruit 6,000 police officers in 2019/20 - plus however much it costs to recruit the other 14,000
- £13bn for six hospital upgrades/builds and 'seed funding' for another 14 to be upgraded/built over the next decade
- £14bn for schools
- £2.2bn for the armed forces
- £100bn for infrastructure, including rail upgrades
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A 5% real-terms increase for the Ministry of Justice resource budget
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£54 million to tackle homelessness
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£200 million to 'transform' bus services
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£160 million for Scottish farmers who lost out under the allocation of Common Agricultural Policy funding
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£90 million for 1,000 diplomats and overseas staff and upgraded missions to help "seize the opportunities of Brexit" around the world.
That's a huge amount of spending over the next four years that isn't included in the shopping list for this manifesto.
In fact, it's almost £130 billion of one-off spending in the list above alone - despite all of it being announced in the last few of months.
Even at the time of the Spending Review, Sajid Javid was repeatedly told off for using the Commons speech for "electioneering" - despite, at the time, Boris Johnson insisting he didn't want to hold an election.
His speech was interrupted a number of times by MPs and the Speaker complaining he had veered off-topic, into election slogans, pleas for MPs to back the PM’s Brexit plan and attacks on the Labour Party.
And Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell branded the speech “grubby electioneering”.
