Government spending by department,

 

Government spending by department. Click image for full graphic. Illustration: Jenny Ridley for the Guardian

Public spending by government departments is a mystery. It shouldn't be: HM Treasury publishes a guide to public spending every year. But if you want a really detailed set of figures of exactly what each department spends its money on, you have to go to the source.

And, as George Osborne sets out public spending plans this week in the Comprehensive Spending Review, this is how those figures stack up.

So, if it was you standing at the dispatch box on Wednesday, which of these would you cut? This is the most comprehensive atlas of public spending available, put together by us with the help of the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

Each year every government department publishes an annual report which includes detailed breakdowns of spending. Of course these are published as PDFs - which seems particularly obtuse as the tables themselves were probably put together in excel in the first place. And this year, it's all got a little harder: instead of annual reports we get 'resource accounts', which are more confusing and more similar to the sort of documents that accountants can pore over.

[If you want to do it yourself, there's a little guide to how to find it at the bottom of this article.]