Good morning. A week today Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, will unveil the outcome of the spending review, which will set spending budgets – day-to-day (“resource”) and capital – covering most of the rest of this parliament. Many departments will get resource budgets that feel like cuts, but the Treasury has a more positive story to tell on capital spending and today Reeves is giving a speech announcing a £15bn spending spree on transport projects, mostly in the north of England.
Pippa Crerar and Jessica Elgot have all the details in our splash story.
As Pippa and Jess report, the Home Office is one of three departments that has yet to settle its budget with the Treasury. According to a report in the Times, in a bid to help the Home Office, Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, Gavin Stephens, the head of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, and Graeme Biggar, the head of the National Crime Agency, have written to the PM saying they are “deeply concerned” about what is in offer for the police. They say:
We are deeply concerned that the settlement for policing and the [NCA], without additional investment, risks a retrenchment to what we saw under austerity. This would have far-reaching consequences.
Policing and the NCA have seen a sustained period where income has not kept pace with demand. Often, this has been masked by attempts to defer costs in the hope of more income in future, but that now leaves policing with very limited room for manoeuvre.
A settlement that fails to address our inflation and pay pressures flat would entail stark choices about which crimes we no longer prioritise. The policing and NCA workforce would also shrink each year.
The Times has summarised this in its splash headline as meaning the police chiefs are saying proposed cuts will mean “some crimes must be ignored”. That sounds grim, although the headline writer may have forgotten that many crimes are ignored already. In its election manifesto last year, Labour had a striking line about the police. “Labour has a straightforward vision for policing and criminal justice. When you call the police, they should come.”
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.20am: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, gives a speech in Greater Manchester on infrastructure spending.
9.30am: Torsten Bell, the pensions minister, gives evidence to the Commons work and pensions committee about pensioner poverty.
Morning: Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, is campaigning in Hamilton ahead of the Scottish parliamentary byelection tomorrow.
Noon: Keir Starmer faces Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
12.30pm: Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, uses the 10-minute rule bill procedure to propose a bill calling for a public inquiry into “UK involvement in Israeli military operations in Gaza”.
4.40pm (UK time): John Healey, the defence secretary, holds a press conference with his German and Ukrainian counterparts after a meeting of Nato defence ministers in Brussels.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line when comments are open (normally between 10am and 3pm at the moment), or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn.bsky.social. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X, but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.