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Everything you can expect in Rachel Reeves' spending review – from Winter Fuel for 9million to massive defence boost

Everything you can expect in Rachel Reeves' spending review – from Winter Fuel for 9million to massive defence boost

The Suna day ago

RACHEL Reeves will tomorrow unleash a spending bonanza of more than £100billion as she seeks to get her shaky Chancellorship back on track.
The long-awaited package will see eye-watering sums of cash poured into shiny new projects like transport, energy and cutting-edge tech in a bid to drive growth.
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But it will also set day-to-day departmental budgets for the next four years - giving extra funding to some while putting the squeeze on others.
Weeks of haggling have seen Ms Reeves lock horns with Cabinet colleagues over how much of the pie they will get.
Tomorrow at 12.30 the Chancellor will reveal to MPs who are winners - and who are the losers.
Winter fuel
Ms Reeves has already announced a humiliating u-turn on winter fuel payments and will restore the £200-£300 sum to nine million pensioners.
She revealed the screeching retreat - that will cost £1.25billion - ahead of tomorrow's Spending Review.
But the about-term came without details of how it would be paid for, with the Chancellor only pledging not to plug the hole with more borrowing.
Critics have warned this could see taxpayers pick up the bill with a fresh raid at the next Budget in the autumn.
Free school meals
Children whose parents receive universal credit will be able to claim free school meals from September 2026 helping more than 500,000 pupils.
But teachers will find that their school budgets will be tightened as schools will have to fund about a quarter of their 4 per cent pay rises themselves.
Schools will be on the hook for around £400 million to stump up for the hikes as department money won't cover the rise.
Police
One of the thorniest issues has been the funding settlement for the police, sparking a behind-the-scenes row with Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.
Top cops have been demanding more money to fight crime and monitor the increasing number of prisoners freed early.
It has seen Ms Cooper locked in furious talks with the Chancellor that went right down to the wire and only resolved on Monday night.
The Sun understands that she has secured a real-terms increase for the police, however tomorrow we will discover the extent of that hike - and whether senior officers are happy.
Trams and buses
A £15 billion pot for funding local transport links in the north of England and the Midlands has so far been set out.
Trams will be at the heart of the cash boost with investment into the systems in Greater Manchester. New bus stations will be built in Bradford and Wakefield.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan is already said to be furious that the capital will miss out on big spending projects to improve transport links.
Defence
Defence Secretary John Healey is set to be one of the big winners from the Spending Review - having been promised 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027.
The MoD budget will also rise to 3 per cent at some point after the next election, with the ambition to hit the target by 2034.
It will be paid for by slashing the spending on overseas aid.
But Ms Reeves is under pressure to go even further on defence spending, with both Donald Trump and NATO boss Mark Rutte pushing for 5 per cent of GDP.
NHS boost
The NHS will be a big winner with £30 billion rise in its day-to-day spending.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting is understood to have initially asked for a 4 per cent hike but will settle for 2.8 per cent.
But infrastructure spending in the health service will remain flat despite NHS managers demanding better buildings and improved IT systems.
Nuclear
The Sizewell C nuclear plant will be given the green light in a £14 billion investment - the first to get the go-ahead in thirty years.
Ten thousand jobs and 1,500 apprentices will help construct the Suffolk site but it won't come on stream for at least another decade.
Several small reactors known as 'mini-nukes' will be built with the government backing the first one with a design by Rolls-Royce.
Housing
Housing Secretary Angela Rayner has been arguing for much more cash to build more social homes.
She only settled with the Treasury over the weekend after playing hardball for a bigger funding.
Ms Rayner is also trying to secure more funding for local authorities tasked with building 1.5million more homes by 2030.

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Fact check: how accurate are Rachel Reeves's spending figures?
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'The chancellor's speech was full of numbers, few of them useful,' said Paul Johnson, the head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Reeves's speech was political to the core — and that extended to her use of statistics. The chancellor appears to have used whichever numbers best suited her position, predominantly to inflate the scale of the government's spending plans. She used bigger, cumulative figures to highlight the scale of investments, rather than annual numbers, and cash increases stripped of their context. She also used Tory spending plans from before the election, which never came to pass, as the baseline for the biggest numbers in her speech. When it did not suit her she ignored the Tory spending plans. While none of the figures are technically inaccurate, economists argue that they are a statistical sleight of hand and that Reeves would be better off being consistent in her use of numbers. Spending going up The claim: The first number in Reeves's speech — bar her obligatory reference to the £22 billion 'black hole' she claims to have been left by the Tories — was the boast that 'in this spending review, total departmental budgets will grow by 2.3 per cent per year in real terms'. The reality: This figure includes spending announced at the budget last year, where there were some of the biggest increases. Over the next three years, total spending — combining day-to-day and investment — will increase by 1.5 per cent. Day-to-day spending will rise by 1.2 per cent a year for the rest of the parliament, about half the rate it rose this year. • More for public services The claim: Reeves promised to add '£190 billion more to the day-to-day running of our public services' as well as an extra £113 billion to public investment. The reality: This is a comparison with previous Conservative plans — dismissed as 'essentially fictitious' by Johnson — drawn up before the election to set a trap for Labour and allow Rishi Sunak to promise tax cuts. The Tory plans envisioned day-to-day spending rising by only about 1 per cent a year, and big cuts in capital spending. Reeves reversed these by changing her fiscal rules to allow more borrowing and is increasing infrastructure spending. But on an annual basis, capital spending will be £151.9 billion in 2029-30, £20.6 billion more in cash terms than it is now. Day-to-day spending will rise by £50.7 billion by 2028-29. More for schools The claim: Reeves said she was providing a 'cash uplift' of more than £4.5 billion for schools by the end of the spending review period. The reality: Context is everything. The Treasury concedes in the small print that the core budget for schools will rise by 0.4 per cent over the next three years. It says that when the cost of expanding free school meals is stripped out of the figures 'you get a real-terms freeze in the budget'. • Rachel Reeves is testing voters' patience … she needs results Backing innovation The claim: Reeves declared that the government was 'backing [Britain's] innovators, researchers and entrepreneurs' with research and development funding rising to a 'record high of £22 billion per year by the end of the spending review'. In a press release the government said that spending on research and development was £86 billion. The reality: Despite the rhetoric, this spending pledge represents a significant scaling back of the government's investment ambitions in research and development. The previous government pledged to hit the £22 billion target by this year and then delayed it until 2027. This target has now been put back even further to 2029. 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NHS spending The claim: With health the big winner, Reeves boasted of 'an extra £29 billion per year for the day-to-day running of the health service' along with a 50 per cent boost in the NHS technology budget. The reality: The £29 billion figure is for NHS England specifically, and its budget will rise by 3 per cent a year in real terms, within a 2.8 per cent per year overall Department of Health rise. Capital budgets were increased last year but will be held flat for the rest of this parliament. Increasing technology spending further will therefore come at the cost of crumbling buildings or modern scanners and other kit. NHS leaders are already saying they will find it harder to shift to more modern, efficient treatments without extra equipment and buildings. 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Mr Lyons wasn't convinced by the numbers, ' Early in her speech the Chancellor said, is the plan credible, and the answer unfortunately is, no.' 'T he starting position is debt is very high, and I think we're in the early stages of Britain going into a debt crisis. If you're looking for good news, it might be that we're not the only country facing this problem; but today the Chancellor gave a speech that I think lacked a lot of the detail.' Allison is not convinced by the claims the economy is stabilising, ' We know it is not true, and we are already starting to see the impact on employment and on businesses. We know payrolls have fallen, that employment's fallen by over 250,000 since Rachel Reeves' budget. This is not an economy where you should be taking the gambles that she's taking. Where is the growth going to come from?'

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