Britain’s most senior civil servant has said the previous Conservative government’s failure to hold a spending review in its final years in office has contributed to uncertainty over the public finances.
Cabinet secretary Simon Case made the claim in a leaked letter as he denied allegations by the Conservatives that the new government’s claims to have inherited an economic “black hole” were bringing the civil service into “disrepute”.
Former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt wrote to Mr Case in July saying it was “deeply troubling” that Rachel Reeves’s claims about the public finances appeared to contradict formal government spending estimates published shortly beforehand.
In his response, which has been leaked to the BBC, Mr Case said the mismatch identified by Mr Hunt was a result of the compressed parliamentary timetable between the sudden general election and the summer. But then he went further, questioning why the government in which Mr Hunt served had not updated different departments’ budgets since 2021.
“I would also note that the sizeable in-year changes to spending plans in recent years have resulted from the lack of a new Spending Review to replan departmental budgets in the face of significant pressures which have materialised since budgets were set in 2021,” Mr Case wrote.
Source: BBC
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