How do Spending Reviews work?

With Rachel Reeves still finalising her comprehensive spending review next Wednesday, this week we’re looking at how the process works, going inside the battles between the Treasury and Whitehall departments on spending plans for the coming years, with John Glen, conservative MP and a former Treasury minister, Sonia Khan, a special adviser to Philip Hammond during his time as Chancellor, join host Alain Tolhurst alongside Bee Boileau, research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and Tom Pope, deputy chief economist at the Institute for Government.

They reflect on how useful spending reviews are for creating economic policy, take a look back at previous reviews and see what can be learned ahead of the Chancellor’s big speech, and what it will say about this government’s priorities over the course of the Parliament, while later in the episode Brandon Lewis, who was a minister in multiple departments under four different prime ministers, describes his experience of the spending review process.

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Presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot