Police have welcomed news its funding will not be further cut in yesterday’s government Comprehensive Spending Review. “This spending review is still one of the tightest in post-war history”. “It will have reassured millions of working families that were set to be significantly worse off next April”. The Scottish party continually pushed for the Conservative Government to change the plans, plans that they had previously promised not to make so the party would be elected in as a majority government.
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IFS figures showed that by 2020, 2.6 million working families would lose on average 1,600 pounds ($2,420) in benefits a year and 1.2 million non-working households would lose 2,500 pounds.
And he said the Chancellor will “need his luck to hold out” if he is to meet his target of a surplus by 2019/20 without raising taxes or imposing further spending reductions.
The change will have major effects on funding patterns across the country, with councils’ spending power more dependent on their ability to raise tax locally, said the thinktank.
George Osborne has presented parliament with the government’s spending review for the next five years.
Merseyside’s police commissioner Jane Kennedy, who had campaigned against the proposed cuts – which were expected to hit PCSOs, the mounted division and those who investigate sexual offences, said: “This is fantastic news”.
“The £15bn Roads Investment Strategy in today’s Spending Review is positive, although it will be interesting to see how the government delivers this with a 37% cut on the Department for Transport’s day-to-day spending”.
The “lucky” Chancellor was able to perform the U-turn because of the “unexpected £27bn jackpot” – with a “booming” economy expected to yield higher-than-expected tax revenue over the next four years.
But the IFS said this would offer only temporary relief to Britain’s poorest.
The Chancellor also announced that people will no longer be able to get cash compensation for minor whiplash claims, in a crackdown created to cut the number of fraudulent claims and likely to lead to reduced motor insurance premiums.
Stuart Hosie of the SNP Treasury said that keeping the pressure on Osborne about these cuts was the right thing to do. “I am today announcing there will be no cuts in the police budget at all”, Osborne said.
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In an interview with Good Morning Britain, the shadow chancellor said: “I was trying to draw attention to the fact, with a bit of irony, that actually what George Osborne is doing is selling off British assets to the Chinese People’s Republic”. It is an entirely different system to the current one, taking in six different tax credits and benefits – with none of the cliff edges of tax credits. “Higher wages in future years will mean tax credits naturally diminish”.
