
Cooper still in last-minute talks with Treasury over spending review
But Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is yet to agree a final settlement with the Chancellor, with reports suggesting greater police spending will mean a squeeze on other areas of her department's budget.
Downing Street is now understood to be involved in the talks, with Ms Cooper the last minister still to reach a deal with the Treasury.
Rachel Reeves is expected to announce funding increases for health, defence and education, but tougher budgets for other departments (Peter Byrne/PA)
The spending review is expected to see funding increases for the NHS, schools and defence along with a number of infrastructure projects as the Chancellor shares out some £113 billion freed up by looser borrowing rules.
But other areas could face cuts as she seeks to balance manifesto commitments with more recent pledges, such as a hike in defence spending, while meeting her fiscal rules that promise to match day-to-day spending with revenues.
On Monday morning, technology minister Sir Chris Bryant insisted that the spending review would not see a return to austerity, telling Times Radio that period was 'over'.
But he acknowledged that some parts of the budget would be 'much more stretched' and 'difficult'.
Sir Sadiq Khan's office is concerned that the spending review could contain no new projects or funding for London (Lucy North/PA)
One of those areas could be London, where Sir Sadiq Khan's office is concerned the spending review will include no new projects or funding for the capital.
The mayor had been seeking extensions to the Docklands Light Railway and Bakerloo Underground line, along with powers to introduce a tourist levy and a substantial increase in funding for the Metropolitan Police, but his office now expects none of these will be approved.
A source close to the Mayor said ministers 'must not return to the damaging, anti-London approach of the last government', adding this would harm both London's public services and 'jobs and growth across the country'.
They said: 'Sadiq will always stand up for London and has been clear it would be unacceptable if there are no major infrastructure projects for London announced in the spending review and the Met doesn't get the funding it needs.
'We need backing for London as a global city that's pro-business, safe and well-connected.'
For too long, communities across the country have been locked out of the investment they deserve.
That's why on Wednesday, we announced funding worth £15.6bn, helping to drive cities, towns, and communities forward. pic.twitter.com/SJ41aeSZJz
— HM Treasury (@hmtreasury) June 6, 2025
Last week, Ms Reeves acknowledged she had been forced to turn down requests for funding for projects she would have wanted to back, in a sign of the behind-the-scenes wrangling over her spending review.
The Department of Health is set to be the biggest winner, with the NHS expected to receive a boost of up to £30 billion at the expense of other public services.
Meanwhile, day-to-day funding for schools is expected to increase by £4.5 billion by 2028-9 compared with the 2025-6 core budget, which was published in the spring statement.
Elsewhere, the Government has committed to spend 2.5% of gross domestic product on defence from April 2027, with a goal of increasing that to 3% over the next parliament – a timetable which could stretch to 2034.
Ms Reeves' plans will also include an £86 billion package for science and technology research and development.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


ITV News
33 minutes ago
- ITV News
Treasury technicalities plus party politics bring more attention for the North East
The Chancellor's big ticket items for the North East came early - which is somewhere between encouraging and disconcerting when we're talking about public transport projects. Around £2.8 billion from the Spending Review was announced last Wednesday for infrastructure in our region, including extending the Tyne and Wear Metro to Washington. By comparison, Rachel Reeves' big speech today was a bit of an anticlimax. In the small print afterwards, we found that areas of Newcastle, Middlesbrough and Stockton that 'have been too easily left behind' are to receive up to £20m over the next decade for things like improving parks and tackling graffiti. The government are calling them 'trailblazer neighbourhoods', which sounds a bit like a spoof initiative from The Thick Of It, and a lot like the Conservative governments' various funding pots for local regeneration schemes. The Tories talked a lot about what they called 'levelling up', with mixed results. Labour have talked less about tackling regional inequalities, but have made a technical tweak that might make a big difference. They've revised the Treasury's 'Green Book', used to judge value-for-money for investment. London and the South East normally deliver bigger bang for your buck, so have often been prioritised for new infrastructure. The government says: no more, wider impacts will be considered, so regions like ours will be able to compete. Despite some government departments having their budgets squeezed when it comes to day-to-day spending, there is money around for investment due to another tweak to government rules, around borrowing. Rachel Reeves made a passing promise today to set out the government's plans for 'Northern Powerhouse Rail' in the coming weeks. Campaigners say it should mean a high speed rail line from Liverpool to Hull, and up to the North East. It's hard not to be sceptical, given it's been talked about in many forms over many years. The Chancellor spoke quite a bit today about the government being focused on ensuring there's economic growth, and people have opportunity, in every part of the country. She also dedicated a fair amount of time to attacking Reform UK, reflecting the threat they pose to Labour, after their local election successes in places like County Durham. The Chancellor has been accused of doom and gloom in her first 11 months in office, focusing on what she claims has been a horrible inheritance from the Conservatives. With this Spending Review she tried to change gear and set out a more positive plan for the years ahead. The North East will hope to play a big part.


Belfast Telegraph
41 minutes ago
- Belfast Telegraph
Fact check: 2025 spending review claims
On Wednesday Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves delivered the Labour Government's first spending review, outlining its spending plans for the next few years. We've taken a look at some of the key claims. How much is spending increasing by? At the start of her speech Ms Reeves announced that 'total departmental budgets will grow by 2.3% a year in real terms'. That headline figure doesn't tell the full story, however. Firstly, 2.3% is the average annual real-terms growth in total departmental budgets between 2023/24 and 2028/29. That means it includes spending changes that have already been implemented, for both the current (2025/26) and previous (2024/25) financial years. The average annual increase between this year and 2028/29 is 1.5%. Therefore, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has said, 'most departments will have larger real-terms budgets at the end of the Parliament than the beginning, but in many cases much of that extra cash will have arrived by April'. Secondly, it's worth noting that the 2.3% figure includes both day-to-day (Resource DEL) and investment (Capital DEL) spending. Capital spending (which funds things like infrastructure projects) is increasing by 3.6% a year on average in real terms between 2023/24 and 2029/30, and by 1.8% between 2025/26 and 2029/30. Day-to-day departmental budgets meanwhile are seeing a smaller average annual real-terms increase – of 1.7% between 2023/24 and 2028/29 and 1.2% between 2025/26 and 2028/29. Which departments are the winners and losers? Ms Reeves touted substantial spending increases in some areas (for example, the 3% rise in day-to-day NHS spending in England), but unsurprisingly her statement did not focus on areas where spending will decrease. Changes to Government spending are not uniform across all departments, and alongside increases in spending on things like the NHS, defence and the justice system, a number of Government departments will see their budgets decrease in real terms. Departments facing real-terms reductions in overall and day-to-day spending include the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (this factors in reductions in aid spending announced earlier this year to offset increased defence spending), the Home Office (although the Government says the Home Office's budget grows in real terms if a planned reduction in asylum spending is excluded) and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Did the Conservatives leave a '£22 billion black hole'? Ms Reeves made a claim we've heard a number of times since it first surfaced in July 2024 – that the previous Conservative government left a '£22 billion black hole in the public finances'. That figure comes from a Treasury audit that forecast a £22 billion overspend in departmental day-to-day spending in 2024/25, but the extent to which it was unexpected or inherited is disputed. The IFS said last year that some of the pressures the Government claimed contributed to this so-called 'black hole' could have been anticipated, but others did 'indeed seem to be greater than could be discerned from the outside'. An Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) review of its March 2024 forecast found an estimated £9.5 billion of additional spending pressures were known to the Treasury at that point in time, but were not known to the OBR as it prepared its forecast. It's true that this review didn't confirm the £22 billion figure, but it also did not necessarily prove that it was incorrect, because Labour's figure included pressures which were identified after the OBR prepared its forecast and so were beyond the scope of the OBR's review. We've written more about how the Government reached the figure of £22 billion in our explainer on this topic. How big is the increase in NHS appointments? Ms Reeves took the opportunity to congratulate Health Secretary Wes Streeting for delivering 'three-and-a-half million extra' hospital appointments in England. The Government has previously celebrated this as a 'massive increase', particularly in light of its manifesto pledge to deliver an extra two million appointments a year. Ms Reeves' claim was broadly accurate – data published last month shows there were 3.6 million additional appointments between July 2024 and February 2025 compared to the previous year. But importantly that increase is actually smaller than the 4.2 million rise that happened in the equivalent period the year before, under the Conservative government – as data obtained by Full Fact under the Freedom of Information Act and published last month revealed. What do announcements on asylum hotels, policing, nurseries and more mean for the Government's pledges? Ms Reeves made a number of announcements that appear to directly impact the delivery of several pre-existing Labour pledges, many of which we're already monitoring in our Government Tracker. (We'll be updating the tracker to reflect these announcements in due course, and reviewing how we rate progress on pledges as necessary). The Chancellor announced an average increase in 'police spending power' of 2.3% a year in real terms over the course of the review period, which she said was the equivalent of an additional £2 billion. However, as police budgets comprise a mix of central Government funding and local council tax receipts, some of this extra spending is expected to be funded by increases in council tax precepts. Ms Reeves said this funding would help the Government achieve its commitment of 'putting 13,000 additional police officers, PCSOs and special constables into neighbourhood policing roles in England and Wales', a pledge we're monitoring here. The spending review also includes funding of 'almost £370 million across the next four years to support the Government's commitment to deliver school-based nurseries across England', which Ms Reeves said would help the Government deliver its pledge to have 'a record number of children being school-ready'. The Chancellor also committed to ending the use of hotels to house asylum seekers by the end of this Parliament, with an additional £200 million announced to 'accelerate the transformation of the asylum system'. When we looked last month at progress on the Government's pledge to 'end asylum hotels' we said it appeared off track, as figures showed the number of asylum seekers housed in hotels was higher at the end of March 2025 than it was when Labour came into Government.


Telegraph
44 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Equalities watchdog tells trans activists personal attacks ‘have to stop'
The equalities watchdog has told trans activists that personal attacks on her and her staff have 'got to stop'. Baroness Falkner of Margravine, the chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), appeared emotional as she revealed to MPs that she had to cancel one meeting after police warned of a ' serious risk ' of violence. She said that while feminist campaigners had acted in a 'dignified and respectful' manner, trans rights activists had made it harder for her staff to come to work in safety. 'Personal attacks, libellous attacks, defamation' 'The level of agitation that they can cause in terms of personal attacks, libellous attacks, defamation, where our family members are affected – our intimate family members have to think about how they're going about to their place of work – has got to stop,' she said. 'I didn't come into public life to bleat on about myself and feel sorry for myself… I have chosen not to walk away, I have chosen to deliver in the public interest as has done every member of my board. 'And they don't need to do this, they do it because of a desire for public service, as do my senior staff.' The watchdog also repeated that companies and organisations should be using EHRC guidance on access to single-sex spaces, rather than those of groups such as Stonewall. Baroness Falkner also said guidance would be issued on how to 'respectfully' question transgender people about their biological sex. Women's rights activists who do not believe in gender ideology, the idea that sex is a spectrum and that people can change their gender identity, have had to run the gauntlet of intimidating protests from the trans rights movement for years. After the Supreme Court ruled in April that the word 'sex' in the Equality Act refers to biological sex, trans rights activists took to the streets, with one carrying a placard showing an illustration of a gallows alongside a slogan suggesting ' the only good Terf (trans-exclusionary radical feminist) ' is a hanged one. In 2022, a group called Pissed Off Trannies left more than 60 bottles of urine outside the EHRC offices and poured some of the contents into the revolving doors. The EHRC has come in for greater criticism from trans rights activists after they published guidance confirming that organisations can bar trans people from toilets and changing rooms meant for the opposite sex. 'Serious risk of violence' Appearing before the Commons women and equalities select committee, Lady Falkner spoke of the effect such violent threats had on her and her organisation. 'Sorry, I'm trying not to be emotional about this because it goes to the heart of what public service is about, and I've been involved in public service for 21 years now,' she said. 'The personal attacks – and I refer to personal attacks as well as the attacks on my staff, because we have a duty of care to our staff and we must ensure that our staff are able to work in a respectable, safe place of work. 'We were due to go to Glasgow for our regular annual board meeting in Scotland, and we were unable to go because the police hadn't been informed and there was serious risk of violence from messages that were seen. 'What bothers me more than my own personal security is that my staff should be able to come to their place of work in safety, and that has been somewhat lacking in the last several years.' Lady Falkner said those on the gender-critical side of the debate, 'who felt disadvantaged or felt the law was not supporting them, did so in a dignified, respectful manner, frequently using the last resort of a tribunal or a court to pursue justice for themselves or their loved ones'. Talking about trans rights activists, she said: 'Here we have a group that I appreciate is vulnerable, but I don't think it is fair because women and girls are vulnerable as well. 'I don't think it is fair to have a balancing act of 'who is more vulnerable'. Victimhood is not the way I approach things. 'The level of agitation that they can cause in terms of personal attacks, libellous attacks, defamation, where our family members are affected – our intimate family members have to think about how they're going about to their place of work – has got to stop.' Lady Falkner was then prevented from continuing to talk about the attacks the EHRC has faced by Sarah Owen, Labour MP and the committee chair. She then bizarrely asked her to clarify that she was not opposed to the right to protest. 'Overly hostile' Last night, Maya Forstater, chief executive of human rights charity Sex Matters, said she was 'shocked' by the 'overly hostile' questioning of some of the members of the committee. 'It was particularly shocking that when Lady Falkner talked about the pressures on EHRC staff of the protests and personal attacks, the chair of the committee, Sarah Owen MP, cut her off,' she said. 'The Supreme Court provided complete legal clarity on the meaning of 'sex' in the Equality Act. Today's proceedings suggest that some MPs simply refuse to accept that.'