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'The devil will be in the detail' | Spending Review Analysed | LBC
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Jun 12, 2025
Aasmah Mir is joined by LBC's Natasha Clark to discuss the Chancellor's Spending Review. 'There is going to be cuts' 'We can't prioritise everything' 'The devil will be in the detail' 'It felt like PR announcements' 'This is them setting out their big picture' 'Where are these cuts going to come from?' Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #natashaclark #aasmahmir #spendingreview #rachelreeves #keirstarmer #labour #chancellor #LBC LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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0:00
But what do you think of what you have heard, the priorities that we heard there
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which are where, of course, NHS, education, housing, defence, asylum seekers in hotels, prison places, police
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What did you think of what you heard? 0345 6060 973. That's the number to get in touch
0:19
You can WhatsApp on the same number. You can text 84850 or ask Alexa to send a comment to LBC
0:26
Now I'm very glad, alongside me, I've got LBC's political editor, Natasha Clarke
0:32
Good afternoon to you. Natasha, there wasn't much in there that we didn't already know
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but I don't know if that's the important bit. What is the important bit? I think, Casper, the important bit is yet to be revealed
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It's all going to be in the small print, in the details of the documents
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that have just in the last few minutes dropped on the government website, which we'll be pouring through this afternoon
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It seemed to me like it was interesting to see what Rachel Reeves' priorities were
1:00
But like you say, again, we sort of did already know what they were going to be. NHS, defence, schools, more money for all of these so-called government priorities
1:07
But like we said earlier, that means that there is going to be cuts elsewhere
1:11
We cannot prioritise everything. We don't have the money to do so. And as you just heard from Mel Stride, the government are borrowing quite a lot of money to put this infrastructure in place and to invest more for the future
1:21
So the devil will be in the detail. What exactly is going to be in the documents
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Where are the cuts going to fall? Which departments are going to have their budget squeezed
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And we don't know that just yet. It felt a little bit like lots of press release announcements
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from the government being discussed right now, but not actually the detail of exactly how you're going to get there
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I think for her, for the Chancellor today, it was about trying to send a message of this is what you're going to get
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under a Labour government This is what you going to see more of in the next few years And of course the government has spent the last year trying to say the Tories left us an absolute mess We are now going to turn the page from that
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We have started to stabilise the public finances, started to stabilise the country
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And now we actually can start to deliver on all that change that we promised you last year
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So this is them sort of setting out their big picture, I think, for what that a little bit, what that will look like
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So defence spending, she talked about, confirmed to hit 2.6% by 2027
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but no mention of that going up to 3%, as we know, needs to happen. She talked quite a lot about Border Force Command
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an extra £280 million for our Border Force police. She promised to end asylum hotels in the next parliament
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That's clearly going to be a priority for the government going forward. It does, of course, mean that it could be potentially another four more years
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of those asylum hotels because they have promised to end them, but they've promised to end them by the end of the parliament
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She, interestingly as well, took aim at Nigel Farage in her statement. Not something you usually hear from a Chancellor of the Exchequer when they're making a statement
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It's usually just the opposition leader they tend to go for. So that was interesting. Not just once, but twice she aimed at him talking about the NHS
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A very nice joke about Nigel Farage spending too much time in the pub and the two chairmen around the corner here in Westminster
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But I think for her today, really what people at the end of the day are going to be thinking about
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is her language about renewing Britain. Do people feel better off? And are they going to feel better off in the next three years
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What exactly is that going to look like? We don't know. We're going to be waiting to see the detail in this spending review documents
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But her talking today about how she's making her choices, this is what a Labour government looks like
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I'm choosing stability, investment. These are the choices of the British people I'm going to deliver
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Is that something that people relate to? Is that what you thought you were going to get when you voted for Labour in
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the last election but lots of stuff to get in there She obviously wants people to feel like she turning on the spending taps but the devil is going to be in that detail Where are those cuts going to come from We don know that just yet And how long will it take for that to become apparent I know that there you know
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there's a lot of documentation that has to be gone through line by line. How long before there's a bit
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of an outcry? Because that's generally what always happens. Yeah, well, as soon as we get into the
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details of those budgets, basically seeing how much in real terms they're going to be able to go up
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we can compare them to the last time and that they were they were they were made what the OBR
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scored them as the Office for Budget Responsibility said at the spring statement and at the last
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budget we've already got a little bit of a hint in some of the language that the Chancellor was
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using today talking about policing getting a 2.3 per cent per year in real terms increase however
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she talked about sort of spending in general which makes me think potentially that that money might
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be coming from from somewhere else um it might be coming from increased taxes from local authorities
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for example she might allow those to go up instead um so that that is one thing i think we will we
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will be digging into because that's something that the vet cooper we know has um has been talking for
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well not a vet cooper police have been talking for days about how they are going to fit they're
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fearing that they're not going to have enough money for the police um and yes it will be basically
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just comparing the departmental budgets from these documents to the last ones um she talked to us
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well about the NHS. There's going to be more money, she says, for the NHS, 3%. That's not
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quite as much as we sometimes spend on the police. I think last time, if I remember correctly
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I think it was around 3.2% was spent extra on the NHS. And again, you saw on the front
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page of the Times today, is that going to be enough to drive down those waiting lists as Labour have promised? This is all about whether the government have enough money
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whether they are spending enough in the right places to deliver all of the things that they already promised us in that last election last year. Messaging is always very interesting
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isn it because um rachel reeves kept saying this is my choice this is labor choice that was her kind of tagline which became a bit irritating after the 14th time You can understand why politicians do it I don know how effective it is
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But what about what the Conservatives were saying there? Planting a kind of seed that she's a spend now, tax later, Chancellor
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that her spending plans are a fantasy. And all this is going to do is lead to a cruel summer of speculation
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I mean, that's a bit disingenuous because that speculation is going to be fuelled by the Conservatives, no doubt, about whether Rachel Reeves is going to put taxes up in the autumn
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How effective do you think a seed of doubt that is? I think it probably will be purely because last year, you'll remember, Labour repeatedly said they weren't going to raise taxes
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And then they did in the budget. And, you know, Rachel Reeves will say this was because we had to fix the problems that the last Tories left us
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But a lot of people feel that that was a bit of a disingenuous thing to have done
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And in that way. So I think what the Tories will be doing, talking about the idea that she might go ahead and do another budget like that
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Now, when my colleague Egi Chombray asked her earlier this week, sorry, last week about whether she would do that, she said, look, I'm not going to do a budget like that ever again
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I don't want to do a budget like that ever again. But no Chancellor wants to raise taxes
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Of course they don't. But we know how much of a precarious situation the public finances are in
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all of this investment needs to grow the economy or she's going to have to look for some other ways
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to plug the gaps in our spending. So I don't think it's a bad argument to make
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And I think, you know, traditionally, the Conservatives have made hay of that argument
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saying Labour are going to put up your taxes. And, you know, the first budget we've got from Rachel Rees
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she has put up taxes. So I think it's a legitimate argument for them to make. But yes, it's obviously a bit rich for the Conservatives to say so
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when they put up taxes repeatedly year after year after year and saw the tax burden reach the highest ever on record
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So they've not really got a leg to stand on that one either
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