Spending Review: An important step but this must be just the start

The Spending Review is a key moment for the Labour Government and shows how they plan to run the country through the next few years, writes Mike Clancy, Prospect General Secretary.

The Spending Review, announced by the Chancellor Rachel Reeves earlier this week, set budgets for each government department for the next four years, and many of the decisions made will have important consequences for our members in both the public and private sectors.

The review also represents a key moment for this Labour Government in describing how they plan to run the country after a turbulent first year in office.

Increased capital investment was the centrepiece of the review, with more funding announced in areas like energy, defence, and housing, along with maintaining research and development spending.

In what will be welcome news to many of our members working in the nuclear industry, the Government announced £14.2 billion of investment to build Sizewell C nuclear plant. Delivering this funding for Sizewell C is a vital step forward, and is critical to securing the future of the nuclear industry in the UK. Prospect is clear that new nuclear is essential to achieving net zero, providing a baseload of clean and secure energy, as well as supporting good, unionised jobs.

Following on from the Strategic Defence Review, the Chancellor also confirmed increased defence spending, including £1.5bn to be spent on six new munitions factories, creating more than 1,000 jobs and building up to a dozen new attack submarines. This spending is welcome and necessary, but we now need to get the details right, which is why this big picture commitment must also be matched by a defence industrial strategy which addresses skills challenges and safeguards our industrial base across the country.

More broadly, the Government must move quickly to publish and implement an ambitious industrial strategy and make sure that the skills system gets the urgent attention it needs to make sure workers will see the benefits of this increased spending in vital infrastructure.

This is especially important considering that the Spending Review also set out worrying real terms cuts to day-to-day spending in some unprotected departments, including DEFRA, the Department for Transport, and DCMS.

These cuts will have a real impact on the government’s ability to deliver on its missions, and so Prospect will be pressing them to explain what they want the civil service to stop doing, given many essential government agencies are already facing recruitment and retention crises, particularly for specialist digital, scientific and technical staff.

Only by investing in the skills our workers and our economy need will the Government be able to achieve its objectives and undo the damage of the last 15 years.