Rail and road projects at risk
MAJOR West Country infrastructure projects such as the proposed A303 tunnel under Stonehenge and re-opening the Portishead to Bristol railway are at risk, according to reports.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves will announce immediate steps to cut costs today as she is expected to unveil a black hole in the accounts of around £20 billion.
She will lay out the spending inheritance left by the previous government – and announce the date of her first autumn Budget – this afternoon as she pledges to “restore economic stability”.
She will say that a Treasury spending audit she commissioned shows that the previous government overspent this year’s budgets by billions of pounds after making a series of unfunded promises.
She will also accuse the previous Conservative government of “covering up the true state of the public finances”.
Ms Reeves is also reportedly set to scrap or cut back a number of infrastructure projects.
These could include the £500 million Restoring Your Railway Fund and the A27 Arundel bypass, The Sunday Times reported.
The paper also said the Chancellor will confirm the Government will not commit itself to a new £1.7 billion tunnel under the Stonehenge monument on the A303.
The title also said that reopening the Portishead to Bristol railway, which closed in the 1960s as part of the Beeching cuts, was unlikely.
Campaigners in fast-growing Portishead have campaigned for decades to restore the line, which also plays a critical part in the MetroWest programme around Bristol.
A new Office of Value for Money, a Labour manifesto pledge, will start work right away to identify and recommend areas where the Government can save money in the current financial year, she will say.
The office will also seek to stop spending which is poor value for money before it begins.
Ms Reeves will announce reforms that target waste in the public sector and aim to make government departments more efficient.
She will also stop non-essential spending on consultants, dispose of surplus estates and speed up the delivery of administrative efficiencies in departments.
The Chancellor is expected to tell the House of Commons: “It is time to level with the public and tell them the truth.
“The previous government refused to take the difficult decisions. They covered up the true state of the public finances. And then they ran away. I will never do that.”
Labour has insisted it will not raise taxes on working people to fund its manifesto commitments and rely instead on economic growth.
At the same time, Ms Reeves and other ministers have repeatedly pointed to the public finances they inherited as being in a worse state than expected.
This has prompted questions about how they plan to deal with cash flow issues. Labour has ruled out lifting income tax, VAT, national insurance and corporation tax, potentially leaving changes to pensions relief and capital gains and inheritance levies on the table.