Speeches by Jones.

“Yes, because ultimately, at the end of the day, it just seemed to be building up a whole host of headaches that we have had to deal with. The last Government tried to deal with some of them in the final few years. Cutting a load of police numbers and then rapidly trying to increase them again is not a long-term, sustai…”

“Instead of just setting a target and hoping for the best, we have worked with Departments to understand their plans. Much as with the rest of the spending review, our job now—and particularly my job—is to make sure that we are going back around that with all the Departments and making sure that they are delivering agai…”

“As a Government, our assessment of that was that because of cuts to public expenditure—particularly in those early years post-2010, in the austerity years—and specifically cuts to capital programmes in our infrastructure and our public services, the last Government missed a trick, essentially, to try to stimulate produ…”

“Well, we do not want to be, so we are working hard to bear down on that subsidy and make the train lines commercially viable again. That is why you see a bit of a dip in the RDEL numbers for transport; we are pushing down on that. Compared with what the original plans were, we have increased transport capital spending …”

“You are right that defence and energy security got a big chunk of capital—defence for perhaps obvious reasons, given that our commitments in the defence budget are predominantly capital, because they are buying military equipment. On energy security, we have obviously made quite a big commitment on nuclear energy in it…”

“It is a question for the Chancellor. We are always guided by our fiscal rules.”

“I was pretty matter of fact about it. We had a budget, and we needed to divvy it out to deliver the plan for change priorities. We have got to a place now where we have a spending settlement that allows the Government to get on with delivery against the plan for change commitments and our promises to the country. I am …”

“I am not going to comment on individual negotiations.”

“That is a good question. I do not know what the most difficult choice was—there were lots of difficult choices.”

“I cannot remember if we ringfenced it specifically. There was a specific ask that we funded through the spending review. A lot of this ends up, for Home Office purposes, being a policing and community policing question, so you would need to ask them precisely how they want to split it up. I know we funded a VAWG ask fr…”

“We made a specific funding allocation to the Home Office for its support of the violence against women and girls mission.”

“I have not been privy to any discussions beyond some of the financing arrangements. You would have to ask the relevant teams.”

“There have been requests to support them from the centre, which has often been an FCDO plus DCMS decision, given the soft power implications that you referenced.”

“It is often a debate, not just with DCMS, but with the Foreign Office. In theory, the BBC is supposed to pay for that service itself. In the previous spending review—”

“Yes.”

“Yes, I think so. That was a conscious ask of the Foreign Secretary, both in the one-year spending review and the multi-year spending review. His view and that of his permanent secretary is that they need to reshape the overall headcount and structure in the Foreign Office. We funded a voluntary exit scheme last year, w…”

“In terms of reflecting on the spending review process itself, I am conscious that I asked a lot of our officials by changing the process. We did a lot of new things for the first time in this spending review, including with other parts of Government—particularly the centre of Government. Our focus now is on the settlem…”

“I will need to check and write to you. It was not a conscious decision to do what you are suggesting, because I am not conscious of it. My answer to the question on flood defences is that, clearly, it is a requirement for the Government to get on with flood defences, given the forecasts that we have. It is an important…”

“I think it might be a hypothetical counterfactual that I am struggling to answer. We recognise that combined authorities in themselves are not the sole answer to the national growth challenge. But as well as significantly increasing the maintenance budget for roads through councils in non-combined authority areas, we h…”

“So you think it would be better if we did not devolve that money to mayors. Is that what you mean?”