09/06/2025 08:45
The Guardian
Chris Bryant acknowledges some budgets will be ‘stretched’ with Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, expected to find cuts elsewhere to boost policeRachel Reeves in standoff over policingGood morning. In theory spending review negotiations can go up to the wire, with the final talks to resolve sticking points taking place late at night, only hours before the decisions, and documents, are presented to MPs. In practice, it does not really happen like that now, last-minute haggling is no longer routine, and, with two days to go before the spending review that will settle government spending until 2019, only one cabinet minister has not yet settled.Here are the key developments this morning on the issue that will dominate the week.Angela Rayner, the deputy PM and housing secretary, settled with the Treasury late last night. The news was broken by Arj Singh from the i, who reports:The i Paper understands that Rayner and Reeves agreed a deal just after 7.30pm after marathon talks on Sunday.But Home Office and Treasury sources were tight lipped on Sunday, in an indication that negotiations over police funding are also going to the wire.That means Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, is the only minister yet to agree a spending settlement with the chancellor, Rachel Reeves. In the Times Chris Smyth says police budgets are expected to rise by more than inflation, but other parts of the Home Office budget may face cuts. He reports:It is understood that Reeves has insisted that policing budgets will rise in each year of the spending review, which sets funding up to 2028-29. However, it remains unclear if the boost will match the more than £1 billion extra officers say is needed to cover existing shortfalls.Cooper is also expected to have to find deeper cuts elsewhere to boost police budgets. The Border Force has warned of longer queues at airports as it faces cuts to its £1.2 billion budget, saying there would be a “threat to national security” if it lost frontline staff.Two police unions have launched a last-minute bid for extra money. In an article in the Daily Telegraph, Nick Smart, president of the Police Superintendents’s Association, and Tiff Lynch, acting chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, say:Police are being asked to do more with less – again – as pressure mounts on already overstretched budgets.Why? Policing faces a £1.2 billion shortfall. This is before it is asked to deliver the ambitious pledges of the new government.Chris Bryant, the culture minister, has said that the spending review will mark “an end to austerity”. He told Times Radio:We know from running the government that spending money of itself isn’t an achievement. Spending money and getting results is an achievement and that’s why we are saying now with this spending review on Wednesday it’s an end to austerity …That period of austerity where I think previous governments simply cut all public service budgets just because they believed that was what you had to do is over.There are going to be other parts of the budget that are going to be much more stretched and be difficult. Continue reading...
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