Reeves sacrifices defence and police for NHS splurge
Rachel Reeves has been accused of sacrificing police and defence spending in favour of a record handout for the NHS.
Police chiefs warned that Labour's flagship election promises on reducing crime could be missed after the Chancellor set out her spending review on Wednesday, while former military leaders criticised her 'totally inadequate' plans for the Armed Forces.
Instead, the Chancellor prioritised a 'record' funding boost for the NHS, which will now get an extra £29 billion a year compared with 2023-24, despite the lack of a detailed reform plan.
Economists said tax rises in the autumn Budget were now inevitable. Treasury documents revealed that the Government was already forecasting a 5 per cent increase in council tax each year until 2028, meaning an extra £395 for the average Band D property.
Chris Philp, the Conservative shadow home secretary, said: 'Despite the biggest tax rises for a generation, this Labour Government has made the wrong choices and is leaving our country's national security at risk.
'The military are not receiving the money they need to face a dangerous and uncertain world and it is likely we will not see the record police numbers I delivered as police minister last year being maintained.'
Boris Johnson also told The Telegraph that Labour's 'feeble' spending on defence would leave Britain at the mercy of Russia.
The spending review set out three years of day-to-day spending and four years of capital investment, with an extra £300 billion spent after money-raising measures last autumn.
Ms Reeves told MPs: 'I have made my choices. These are my choices. These are the choices of the British people.' Writing for the Telegraph, she added: 'We are keeping our country safe.'
But there was immediate scrutiny of the Chancellor's priorities, which Sir Mel Stride, the Conservative shadow chancellor, described as a 'spend now, tax later'.
There were also accusations of questionable accounting as critics asked whether Ms Reeves was being fully transparent on spending levels.
Health spending will rise by £17.2 billion a year between 2025-26 and 2029, almost 90 per cent of total additional day-to-day spending, leaving budgets in real terms flat or falling per person for most other Whitehall departments.
The real budgets for daily running costs for defence, including the Armed Forces, will rise by just 0.7 per cent per year over the next three years.
That compares with a day-to-day budget increase of 3 per cent for the NHS. However, Ms Reeves's cash injection for tanks, warships and military bases will mean the overall defence budget rises by an average of 3.8 per cent until the next election.
The Resolution Foundation said the surge in health spending would 'leave little to rebuild other public services'. The think-tank described increases for defence and education as 'small'.
Extra funding for the police is expected to amount to just £200 million in real terms by the end of the decade.
The policing budget will rise by 1.7 per cent a year. Police chiefs criticised a Treasury suggestion it was increasing by 2.3 per cent, noting that the figure included a past boost to cover the National Insurance increase.
Documents released alongside the spending review suggested that higher council tax police precepts would form part of 'additional income' used to increase police budgets, alongside funds from central government.
Senior officers warned that the lack of funds puts at risk Labour promises to deploy an extra 13,000 neighbourhood police officers, as well as halve violence against women and girls and reduce knife crime.
Gavin Stephens, the chairman of the National Police Chiefs' Council, said: 'It is clear that this is an incredibly challenging outcome for policing.
'In real terms, today's increase in funding will cover little more than annual inflationary pay increases for officers and staff ... the amount falls far short of what is required to fund the Government's ambitions and maintain our existing workforce.'
Tiff Lynch, the acting chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said: 'When this Government came in, they said they had the police's back. It feels like we have been incredibly let down.'
The Association of Police and Crime Commissioners said that 'the funding announced is not enough to deliver the Government's Safer Streets mission'.
Sadiq Khan, the London Mayor, also claimed it would mean cuts in the number of Metropolitan Police officers. He called the funding 'insufficient'.
Earlier this year, it was announced that defence spending would rise from 2.3 per cent of GDP to 2.5 per cent. However, new plans for the 2028-29 financial year show the Government will not go further, despite the stated 'ambition' to reach 3 per cent in the early 2030s.
It threatens to undermine Britain's expected endorsement of an even more stretching 3.5 per cent target, which is set to be adopted at a Nato summit this month.
Earlier this week, Mark Rutte, the Nato secretary general, warned that failure to invest in defence would mean 'you could still have the NHS … the pension system, but you better learn to speak Russian'.
Mr Johnson, the former prime minister, told The Telegraph that the lack of new defence funding beyond February's uplift was a 'wasted' opportunity.
He said: 'My view is that this Government is completely failing to show the leadership that is needed to defend Britain and defend Europe. Labour are congenitally hostile to defence spending. Their grass roots are still basically Corbynistas who think Russia is a great thing. Those views are still highly influential in Labour.'
The Treasury also came under fire for allegedly massaging its numbers after Ms Reeves confirmed intelligence services spending would be included as defence spending, taking the figure to 2.6 per cent.
Sir Ben Wallace, the former Tory defence secretary, said: 'Today's spending review confirmed what we all feared. Rather than making tough decisions on public spending priorities, Rachel Reeves chose to use Treasury tricks to deceive us all.
'They have now folded in intelligence spending, Ukraine spending and even Foreign Office money to the notional 'defence' figure. The result is that core defence spending will not even be 2.5 per cent as promised: not even close. There was no path to 3 per cent either. It was just a con all along.'
Lord Dannatt, a former head of the Army, said the figures presented on Wednesday were 'totally inadequate' and warned that the UK would be 'embarrassed' at the Nato summit in the Hague later this month.
By contrast, the NHS was one of the big beneficiaries of the spending review.
Whereas the defence spending uplift largely came in capital investment, the health budget rise was in day-to-day spending. An extra £29 billion a year for the running of the health service was announced, with Ms Reeves promising 'more appointments', 'more doctors' and 'more scanners'.
Another winner was Lord Hermer, the Attorney General criticised for defending alleged terrorists before he took the job. A long-standing friend of Sir Keir Starmer, his law officers were given a spending increase of 5.3 per cent, although the rise was small in cash terms.
The Chancellor defended her approach in an article for The Telegraph. She said: 'I have announced record investment in the NHS, with £29 billion more a year to improve patient care.
'But let me be clear: this investment comes on the condition of reform. It's not enough to spend money on a broken system. It is about investing to reform services so they are fit for the modern century.'
Ms Reeves insisted she was a defender of national security, writing: 'We are keeping our country safe with an £11 billion real-terms increase in defence spending, making sure our Armed Forces have the equipment they need. And we are boosting funding for our security and intelligence agencies, so they have the tools they need to respond to new threats.'
But Sir Mel countered in his own article for The Telegraph: 'Rachel Reeves confirmed that she is a 'spend today, tax tomorrow' Chancellor. Her spending spree on the country's credit card has set us on a collision course in the autumn when more tax rises will hit working families' pockets hard. After a year of chaos, how can anyone take this Government seriously?'
There were other claims of questionable accounting. The Government vowed to eventually find £14 billion a year of efficiency savings. But a document some 50 pages long detailing claims by each department on how those savings would be made included loose promises such as better use of artificial intelligence.
The Chancellor also pledged to end the 'costly' use of hotels to house asylum seekers by the end of this parliament. However, the Home Office will still be paying £2.5 billion a year by then to support migrants.
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