Rachel Reeves laid the foundations on Wednesday for the next General Election when she unveiled her Spending Review.
The Labour Chancellor set out day-to-day spending plans for the next three years and capital spending plans for the next four.
She confirmed boosts for the NHS to further cut waiting lists, to defence to strengthen the UK’s armed forces in the face of the threat from Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and for schools.
But her spending plans also included squeezes for other departments, including the Home Office.
Key points in her Spending Review included:
* Allocating £190bn more to the day to day running of public services over the course of the Spending Review, compared to the previous government’s plans.
* Her debt fiscal rule had allowed public investment to be raised by more than by £100bn in the Autumn, and a further £13bn in the Spring.
* Total departmental budgets will grow by 2.3% a year in real terms
NHS
* An extra £29bn per year for the day to day running of the health service
Schools
* Investment rising to nearly £2.3bn per year to fix “crumbling classrooms”, with £2.4bn per year to continue the programme to rebuild 500 schools
Defence
* Defence spending will rise to 2.6% of GDP by April 2027, including a £600m uplift for Britain’s security and intelligence agencies.
Police and borders
* Increasing “police spending power” by an average 2.3% per year in real terms over the Spending Review period, or more than £2bn
* Funding of up to £280m more per year by the end of the spending review for the new Border Security Command to tackle illegal immigration
Transport
* A four-year settlement for Transport for London amid fears the capital will miss out on key funding.
* To connect Oxford and Cambridge, a further £2.5bn for the continued delivery of East-West rail
* £15.6bn for public transport projects in England's city regions
* A further £3.5bn for the Transpennine Route Upgrade, with a pledge to “take forward our ambitions on Northern Powerhouse Rail”
Housing
* £39bn over the next 10 years to build affordable and social housing
Energy
Business
For small businesses seeking access to finance, the financial firepower of the British Business Bank will be increased to £25.6bn
AI and tech
* £2bn for the Government’s AI Action Plan
* Research and development funding to rise to £22bn per year by the end of the Spending Review
Devolution
The “largest settlements in real terms since devolution” with £52bn for Scotland; £20bn for Northern Ireland and £23bn for Wales by the end of the Spending Review period
Ms Reeves is vowing to stick to her fiscal rules on day-to-day spending and cutting debt to avoid a Liz Truss-style economic meltdown.
But the Institute for Fiscal Studies is warning that the Chancellor has so little room for manoeuvre that if “anything at all goes wrong with any of the current forecasts” further tax rises may be needed in the Autumn Budget
