Speeches by Jones.

“Exactly right. We spoke to the Law Officers’ Departments in the same way. We had a kind of trilateral discussion between three—”

“Thank you, Chair, and thank you to the Committee for having me today. We started with the plan for change—the Prime Minister’s published strategic framework for this Government over the course of this Parliament, where the missions that we came into government to deliver have been translated into certain priorities. Th…”

“Exactly.”

“The way that it works is that the Foreign Office gets what is left when the Home Office has spent ODA qualifying spend.”

“Yes, and there was a new set of guardrails and guidelines published for the use of financial transactions, I think, at the spring statement.”

“Yes, ideally it would get bigger, but you are right.”

“There is no change to the ODA mechanisms, no.”

“It is.”

“We published some information, I think, in the spending review document.”

“There are meetings that we have on a fairly regular drumbeat. As I say, a lot of my meetings with the OVFM were to understand where we were dispatching them to do what pieces of work and then to receive their analysis about what they thought we might do differently.”

“It wasn’t 15 people who came to me; it was about, I think, three or four, but they have other people to help them.”

“I suspect that we probably agree with that, which is why there is such a focus on social housing through the affordable housing programme uplift.”

“I would say two things. First, we have devolved funding—for example, the transport funding—for the reason I have just set out, which is that we believe intra-city transport in itself is growth-enhancing and that mayors and their local authorities know best where, at that level of spend, they should enhance their local …”

“Exactly, and I am asking for feedback and reflection on what we have done, and what we might then want to carry on doing, do better, or do differently in the next spending review. You are right that the purpose of my job, now that the spending review negotiations have finished, is to work with colleagues in the Cabinet…”

“I would be very happy to be.”

“If I am still the Chief Secretary by then—who knows, I might be on your Committee.”

“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…”