Government monopoly services can only be perpetually underfunded. That is the nature of a market service divorced from public pricing and consumer choice. I recommend reading about public choice theory. Additionally, the biggest driving force in our boom/bust economic cycle is central bank money supply inflation through money creation and credit expansion. These actions enrich the politically-connected through the Cantillon effect while sending false signals into the market resulting in entrepreneurial malinvestment as described by the Austrian Business Cycle Theory.
It's impossible to tax society into prosperity. It's impossible to provide quality goods and services through beauraucracy. The escalating economic turmoil we have experienced for the past quarter-century is a direct consequence of governmental intervention, and I recommend reading or listening to The Pretense of Knowledge by Friedrich A. Hayek, because his warning when he received his Nobel prize in economics is still relevant today.
RE: Britain's Struggling Economy....