8.27am.) a news release:
From mid-April, local authorities in England will start to receive their share of the government’s record £1.6bn highway maintenance funding, including an extra £500m – enough to fill 7 million potholes a year.
But to get the full amount, all councils in England must from today publish annual progress reports and prove public confidence in their work. Local authorities who fail to meet these strict conditions will see 25% of the uplift (£125m in total) withheld.
Potholes matter. Voters care about the state of the roads, they notice when they improve and so there is a reason why Starmer talking about potholes, just as Rishi Sunak did when he was PM. We may even get a picture like this soon.
But with the spring statement only two days away, and the government facing criticismg on multiple fronts, Starmer will be lucky to get 90 seconds on potholes before other questions kick in. Here are just some of the other difficult topics that could come up.
Why does the government seem minded to water down the digital services tax, saving US tech companies potentially hundreds of millions of pounds, in a move that would be seen as appeasement of the Trump administration? Rowena Mason has the latest on this story, which splashes the Guardian, here.
Will the government’s plans to cut the size of the civil service really lead to the loss of 50,000 jobs, as the Times reports? In their story Oliver Wright and Aubrey Allegretti say:
Ministers are drawing up plans to axe up to five times as many civil service jobs as previously planned, as Rachel Reeves puts herself on a collision course with public sector unions.
As she looks to balance the books in her spring statement this week, the chancellor announced on Sunday that she would cut up to £2 billion from the government’s running costs by 2030.
The cut equates to 15 per cent of the government’s £13 billion-a-year administration budget, of which more than three quarters is spent on staff.
The Times understands that the cuts are likely to reduce the size of the civil service by up to 50,000 jobs — five times more than previously mooted by the government.
Will Starmer let the Department for Education cut universal free school meals for infants as part DfE budget cuts? According to the Times, that is one option that has been floated. “The education secretary has also offered to axe funding for free period products in schools as well as dance, music and PE schemes as part of potential savings,” the Times reports. Will Hazell in the i says the education sector “is braced for the “worst financial situation for a generation”.
All these headlines relate to the spring statement on Wednesday, which is already generating grim headlines for No 10.
But Starmer is also likely to be asked about relations with President Trump, and how he felt when he heard Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, ridicule Starmer’s Ukraine policy in an interview. Asked about Starmer’s plans for a “coalition of the willing”, Witkoff said:
I think it’s a combination of a posture and a pose and a combination of also being simplistic. There is this sort of notion that we have all got to be like [British wartime prime minister] Winston Churchill. Russians are going to march across Europe. That is preposterous by the way. We have something called Nato that we did not have in World War Two.
Here is the agenda for the day.
8.30am: Keir Starmer is being interviewed on Radio 5 Live.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
2.30pm: John Healey, the defence secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
4.30pm: Steve Reed, the environment secretary, gives evidence to the environmental audit committee.
If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line or message me on social media. I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word.
If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use social media. You can reach me on Bluesky at @andrewsparrowgdn. The Guardian has given up posting from its official accounts on X but individual Guardian journalists are there, I still have my account, and if you message me there at @AndrewSparrow, I will see it and respond if necessary.
I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos. No error is too small to correct. And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.
Source: theguardian.com
