Sunak announces one-year Spending Review

The Chancellor has decided to conduct a one-year Spending Review in order to prioritise the response to coronavirus, and continue to focus on supporting jobs.

Planned or late November, the one-year review replaces the long-term Comprehensive Spending Review, which economists had warned against as the pandemic meant setting longer-term spending targets would prove difficult. Instead, the review will set department’s resource and capital budgets for 2021-22 only, and Devolved Administration’s block grants for the same period.

The Spending Review will build on existing support for businesses and families, and focus on three areas: providing departments with the certainty they need to tackle coronavirus and deliver the government’s Plan for Jobs to support employment; giving vital public services enhanced support to continue to fight against the virus alongside delivering first class frontline services; and investing in infrastructure to deliver plans to unite and level up the country, drive our economic recovery and Build Back Better.

Sunak said: “In the current environment its essential that we provide certainty. So we’ll be doing that for departments and all of the nations of the United Kingdom by setting budgets for next year, with a total focus on tackling Covid and delivering our Plan for Jobs. Long term investment in our country’s future is the right thing to do, especially in areas which are the cornerstone of our society like the NHS, schools and infrastructure. We’ll make sure these areas crucial to our economic recovery have their budgets set for further years so they can plan and help us Build Back Better.”