Spending Review: Khan slams lack of Met and infrastructure cash
Sir Sadiq Khan has launched a scathing assessment of the Chancellor’s long-awaited Spending Review, warning it will strangle his ability to deliver new affordable homes and create jobs, and mean fewer police officers on the capital’s streets.
In a statement released soon after Rachel Reeves concluded her speech, London’s newly-knighted mayor said he was “concerned” about the lack of cash made available for the Met or new infrastructure, and that investment in the UK’s regions shouldn’t come at the expense of London.
“The way to level up other regions will never be to level down London,” he wrote, “I’ll continue to fight for the investment we need so that we can continue building a fairer, safer and greener London for everyone.”
City Hall had been engaged in weeks of fraught negotiations with the Treasury in the run-up to Rachel Reeves’ statement, with the Khan angling for cash to fund upgrades to public transport and bolster the Metropolitan Polices moribund finances.
But it is a battle the Chancellor confirmed he had lost on Wednesday, with the only new money unveiled during her speech being a fresh bung for Transport for London (TfL).
The Spending Review document published alongside Reeves’ statement confirmed that TfL would get an additional £2bn in extra funding between 2026 and 2030, which it said was “the largest multi-year settlement for London in over a decade”.
It also said it “recognises the potential” benefits that an extension of the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) to Thamesmead would bring to the city’s economy, but only committed to “explore options” for its delivery with City Hall.
Responding to the absence of DLR funds, Khan, who had also been lobbying for cash to fund an extra leg of the Bakerloo line, said: “It’s… 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.”
The Spending Review, a major milestone which lays out government spending plans for the next five years, also failed to meet demands laid out by Metropolitan Police chief for more funding.
Mark Rowley engaged in an impassioned public campaign in the weeks leading up to the Chancellor’s speech, warning that the government would fail to meet the ambitious crime commitments in Labour’s manifesto without additional funding.
He told the Today programme last month that police forces were still carrying the “scar tissue of years of austerity cuts”.
“We want to do all the things the government committed to a year ago,” he said. “We cannot do that without more money as well.”
The Treasury announced funding for the police would jump by 2.3 per cent in real terms over the review’s five-year period, a minor boost for Khan and Rowley. But overall the Home Office was dealt a 2.6 per cent real-terms spending cut over over the next five years.