Not even Jeremy Corbyn can distract ministers from the fact that in the next few months, they’ll be announcing huge cuts to their departmental spending. They submitted their proposals for cuts for the spending review to the Treasury earlier this month.
Most ministers described the process as ‘bruising’, but they didn’t seem quite as agitated as you might expect when they’ve been asked to model cuts of 40 per cent to their spending pots. This is possibly because George Osborne asked for 40 per cent cuts alongside proposals for 25 per cent cuts, and many of them assume that the real figure will be somewhere in between.
Some haven’t made that assumption though: Sajid Javid is rumoured to have made clear that he favours the 40 per cent model of cuts for his department. And I understand that those departments that have really worked hard to reduce spending will be rewarded, so a lower figure might not benefit them anyway.
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