Spending Round 2019

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

What I can confirm to the right hon. Lady, and I hope she will find this helpful, is that for the Home Office my starting point was to roll over all funding in real terms that it had received this year, so that was the baseline, which had not been done before. I added to that the extra costs that would be required, with the major cost being for the extra officers. So the real-terms increase in the Home Office budget is £800 million. That is an increase in the real-terms growth rate of 6.3%, the biggest real-terms increase in the Home Office budget in 15 years.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

As we saw on the Public Accounts Committee during the Labour years, if there are rapid increases in public spending, particularly on health, they are invariably accompanied by increasing levels of unproductivity, so how is the Chancellor going to maintain his laser-like focus on economy and efficiency and ensure that a greater proportion of our spending is not sucked into administration, away from the frontline? In other words, tax and spend on its own does not work.

[Sajid Javid]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. He talked about it in the context of health, but we could apply it to the spending of many other Departments. He is absolutely right that as we allocate this new spending, especially if it is multi-year funding amounting to billions of pounds, it is imperative that we make sure every penny is spent wisely. That work is done jointly with the Department, but also in a unit in the Treasury. We will have a laser-like focus on efficiency, and if we need to take action we will not hesitate.