There were always going to be winners and losers in Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s spending review and it appears that Sadiq Khan’s London has pulled the short straw. The Labour mayor’s frustration at the Chancellor deepened this week ahead of her speech today over fears that the capital wouldn’t a sufficient cut of the government’s cash. Today, that has proved to be the case: while a four-year settlement was announced for Transport for London, Khan has lamented that it is ‘disappointing’ there had been no promise made by the Treasury to ‘invest in new infrastructure London needs’. The gloves are coming off…
In a statement released after the spending review announced, Khan went on:
I remain concerned that this Spending Review could result in insufficient funding for the Met and fewer police officers. It’s also disappointing that there is no commitment today from the Treasury to invest in the new infrastructure London needs. Projects such as extending the Docklands Light Railway not only deliver economic growth across the country, but also tens of thousands of new affordable homes and jobs for Londoners. Unless the government invests in infrastructure like this in our capital, we will not be able to build the numbers of new affordable homes Londoners need.
Shots fired! Indeed there was only a scattering of references made to the capital city throughout Reeves’s speech, with the Chancellor focusing more on projects further afield – from upgrades to the TransPennine route to the Acorn carbon capture project in Aberdeenshire – in a bid to reassure voters across the country that the Treasury had their interests at heart. The NHS emerged as a clear winner today, while defence has also come away from the review well. But thanks to Reeves’s tight constraints, not everyone will be left satisfied by today’s statement. Will anyone else come out and express their disappointment publicly, however? Watch this space…
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