Nigel Huddleston

The Chancellor presented to Parliament today an assessment of the state of our spending inheritance. The Chancellor confirmed the Budget will be held on the 30th October, alongside a full and independent forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility.

The process for access talks is set out in the Cabinet Manual. Access talks are initiated with permission from the Prime Minister of the day and are confidential.

It is a long-established precedent that information about the discussions that have taken place between Cabinet ministers and officials is not shared publicly.

As the Chancellor laid before the House in her speech, the government has established a new Office of Value for Money, with an immediate focus on identifying areas where we can reduce, stop, or improve the value of spending. The chair of the office will report directly to the Chancellor and Chief Secretary to the Treasury who will be appointed in due course.

The office will not be established in statute but will sit within HM Treasury.

Existing departmental resources will be reprioritised to fulfil the needs of the office where possible.

It is the responsibility of police, prisons, and the probation service to work collaboratively in order to assess and respond to the threat from Serious and Organised Crime in prison.

Serious and organised crime is a major threat to the national security and prosperity of the UK and organised crime groups continue to diversify their tactics, exploiting technology and online platforms.

The Government is committed to tackling serious and organised crime in all its forms and ensuring police have the capabilities they need protect communities from harm.

We are delivering the Safer Streets mission to create a safer, fairer country for all and have increased funding for policing by more than half a billion pounds next year, including over £260million for the core grant and additional funding for neighbourhood policing.

We are working hard to deter, detect and disrupt the illegal use of drones to deliver contraband into prisons. We conduct vulnerability assessments across the estate to identify risks, and to develop and implement plans to manage and mitigate them. HM Prison & Probation Service uses targeted countermeasures such as improvements to windows, netting and grills to stop drones delivering contraband such as drugs, mobile phones and weapons.

We work across government, including with the Ministry of Defence, to examine options to mitigate the threat of drones to prisons. We are also engaging with international counterparts to develop our learning, support our strategy and share best practice. Due to operational sensitivities, we are not able to discuss in detail the tactics used by HMPPS to disrupt drones, including technologies used, however our response must be specific to a prison setting and tailored to individual prisons.