Departments also need to find “efficiency gains” averaging 4 percent by 2028/29, a total of £13.8 billion per year. HM Revenue and Customs plans to save 13.1 percent of its spending through “AI and automation” and basing 85 percent of staff outside London, while the Department for Work and Pensions will use artificial intelligence to review jobseekers’ CVs.
Eleven central London government offices will be closed, including 102 Petty France (currently home to the Ministry of Justice) and 39 Victoria Street (used by the Department of Health), while overseas allowances for British diplomats are — hold on to your canapés — “being reviewed and revised.”
Some of the precise calculations behind these efficiency savings still lack detail, though — and officials have declined to say exactly how many civil service jobs will be lost as a result.
4) The small print hurts: building homes
The chancellor rattled off big numbers (often shorn of context) to prove she is opening the spending taps. As always, the devil is in the detail.
Many figures in the spending review are measured from the start of “phase one,” 2023/24 — when the Conservatives were still in power. Spending becomes far tighter in “phase two,” which starts from next year. Real-terms increases in day-to-day spending will slow from 2.7 percent in 2024/25 to just 1 percent a year from 2027/28.
Some headline numbers are also spread over long periods. Reeves promised to deliver Labour’s manifesto pledge to build 1.5 million homes by 2029 with a £39 billion Affordable Homes Programme. Yet this is spread over a decade, and will only hit its stride (£4 billion a year) by 2029/30, around the time of the next election. Labour MPs will want to see houses built, and voters moving in, ASAP.
