Spending review 2025 live: Reeves to announce £39bn affordable homes plan to ‘turn the tide on housing crisis’ – UK Times

Rachel Reeves will unveil her spending review on Wednesday, arguing that her priorities are “the priorities of working people”.

The chancellor is expected to focus on “Britain’s renewal” as she sets out her spending plans for the coming years, with big increases for the NHS, defence and schools.

Arguing that the government is “renewing Britain”, she will acknowledge that “too many people in too many parts of the country are yet to feel it”.

She will say: “This government’s task – my task – and the purpose of this spending review is to change that, to ensure that renewal is felt in people’s everyday lives, their jobs, their communities.”

Among the main announcements is expected to be a £30 billion increase in NHS funding, a rise of around 2.8 per cent in real terms, along with an extra £4.5 billion for schools and a rise in defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP.

The government is being urged to create child-friendly playful neighbourhoods and disrupt the “addictive grip” of smartphones on children’s lives.

Closures of playgrounds, busier roads, shortened school break times and the dominance of screentime have restricted children’s opportunities to play, a report has suggested.

Urgent action is needed to create more opportunities for children to play outdoors and away from digital devices and social media, according to a report by the Raising the Nation Play Commission inquiry.

It warned: “Too many of our children are spending their most precious years sedentary, doomscrolling on their phones and often alone, while their health and wellbeing deteriorates.”

Rachel Reeves will set out her spending plans for the coming years today as she unveils her spending review.

The review, which will set out day-to-day spending plans for the next three years and capital spending plans for the next four, is expected to see boosts for the NHS, defence and schools.

But it is also likely to involve squeezes for other departments as the Chancellor seeks to keep within the fiscal rules she has set for herself.

Her room for manoeuvre has also been further constrained by the government’s U-turn on winter fuel payments, which will see the benefit paid to pensioners receiving up to £35,000 per year at a cost of around £1.25 billion to the treasury.

The full details will be revealed in the Commons on Wednesday, but several announcements have already been made.

– £15.6 billion for public transport projects in England’s city regions;

– £16.7 billion for nuclear power projects, including £14.2 billion for the new Sizewell C power plant in Suffolk;

– £39 billion over the next 10 years to build affordable and social housing;

– An extension of the £3 bus fare cap until March 2027;

– £445 million for upgrades to Welsh railways.

The chancellor is also expected to announce changes to the Treasury’s “green book” rules that govern whether major projects are approved.The government hopes that changing the green book will make it easier to invest in areas outside London and the South East.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves will outline tight spending controls for most departments in a move likely to fuel concern over real-terms cuts.

While the NHS, education and defence are expected to see spending rises, other areas – including parts of the Home Office – are facing tighter budgets.

Policing is reportedly in line for a funding boost, but this could come at the expense of cuts elsewhere in the department.

Sources close to London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan have voiced concerns that the capital is being overlooked in the review.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that raising NHS funding by more than 2.5 per cent could lead to further tax rises or cuts elsewhere in the autumn budget.

Despite the pressure, Ms Reeves will defend her choices, saying: “I have made my choices. In place of chaos, I choose stability. In place of decline, I choose investment. In place of retreat, I choose national renewal.”

Labour’s fiscal rules remain in place, including its manifesto pledge not to raise income tax, national insurance or VAT.

Rachel Reeves will unveil her long-awaited spending review on Wednesday, pledging to “invest in Britain’s renewal” through £113 billion of funding made possible by looser borrowing rules.

The chancellor is expected to outline major increases in public spending on the NHS, defence and education, arguing that the new investment is only possible because of the “stability” she introduced after the autumn budget.

“The priorities in this spending review are the priorities of working people,” Ms Reeves will say.

“To invest in our country’s security, health and economy so working people all over our country are better off.”

She will also announce reforms to the Treasury’s so-called “green book” – the rules that determine which areas receive public investment – in a bid to shift funding away from London and the South East and drive growth in other parts of the UK.

Rachel Reeves will today make one of her biggest statements to MPs since Labour’s general election victory.

The chancellor will unveil the results of her line by line spending review, setting out the budgets of government departments until the end of the decade.

The review will be the first conducted by a Labour government since Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown’s comprehensive spending review in 2007. And it will see Ms Reeves walk the tightrope between delivering on the party’s election promises while seeking to squeeze within her self-imposed fiscal rules.

Our political correspondents Archie Mitchell and Millie Cooke have more details on what to expect here:

The government will commit £39 billion over the next 10 years to fund affordable housing, in what it has billed as the biggest investment in a generation.

As part of her spending review, chancellor Rachel Reeves will set out plans to almost double annual investment in affordable homes to £4 billion by 2029/30, compared to £2.3 billion a year between 2021 and 2026.

The announcement is designed to help meet Labour’s promise to build 1.5 million homes by the time of the next election.

A government source said: “We’re turning the tide against the unacceptable housing crisis in this country with the biggest boost to social and affordable housing investment in a generation.”

The funding is expected to sit alongside previously announced plans, including £15.6 billion for transport upgrades in England’s city regions and £16.7 billion for new nuclear projects such as Sizewell C.

Keir Starmer is facing humiliation on the international stage after experts at the United Nations called for his controversial deal with Mauritius on the Chagos Islands to be suspended.

UN special rapporteurs criticised the agreement – which hands back sovereignty of the archipelago to Mauritius and leases back the UK-US military base on Diego Garcia for £101m per year for 99 years – for failing to protect the rights of Chagossians.

Our political editor David Maddox reports:

Flagship planning reforms which are “critical” to the delivery of Labour’s pledge to build 1.5 million homes have cleared the Commons.

MPs voted by 306 to 174, majority 132, to approve the Planning and Infrastructure Bill at third reading on Tuesday evening.

Housing minister Matthew Pennycook said the Bill, which aims to improve certainty and decision-making in the planning system, will help to tackle the UK’s housing crisis.

The last Conservative government also considered sanctioning Israeli ministers over the war in Gaza, Dame Priti Patel has said, after the UK government announced travel bans and asset freezes for two far-right members of Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition.

Speaking in the Commons, the shadow foreign secretary said: “The situation in the Middle East and the suffering we are seeing is serious and completely intolerable.

“We continue to see violence, deaths and casualties, and near aid distribution centres, which is simply incomprehensible and that should simply never happen.”

Dame Priti added: “The minister will be aware that the sanctioning of individuals is always under review, that is the right policy. And in the case of Israel, this has been previously considered even by Lord Cameron, who has spoken of that in the last government.”