ExDancer
Where's the money to come from? The government doesn' t have a bottomless pit they can dip into at the drop of a hat. I'd gladly pay an extra amount in tax to compensate these unfortunate people, especially if they were given it NOW, would you?
Of course we have a 'bottomless pit' the government can call on, some posters have pointed out a couple and I'd add the some £900billion created by quantitative easing since 2008.
It's called fiat currency. That is, currency not 'backed' by anything except trust which can be created by the government at will. The limiting factor on this is the resources available for purchase and the danger of inflation.
Inflation can be controlled by the government taxing back a proportion of the money it issues. Resources? Well, it's pretty obvious if resources are available or not.
The real purpose of money is to enable economic activity and it is most useful when circulating in the economy. The problem with big projects like HS2 (leaving aside one's opinion on the need for it) is that, although some of the money it has cost has circulated (after all, the workers and suppliers had to be paid) a great deal of the money has ended up in the hands of the already wealthy (e.g. corporations, shareholders and big businesses), who are famously known for their tendency not to spend much of it in the domestic economy but to save it in ways which improve their wealth holdings, where it is doing nothing which benefits the national economy.
They are enabled by a tax regime which favours them when it could more usefully prevent them acquiring so much and leaving it doing nothing.
I'm all for increasing taxation but increasing taxation by progressive measures which restrain the acquisition of wealth, not place greater burdens on the squeezed middle and the just about managing...