Rachel Reeves blamed the Tories for looming spending curbs today as she tried to cool Cabinet infighting.
The Chancellor acknowledged ministers will not get ‘everything they want’ in the spending review due next Wednesday.
But in a speech in Manchester she urged them to recognise ‘this is a result of 14 years of Conservative maltreatment of our public services’ – signalling she will stick to her fiscal rules.
Ms Reeves also talked up £15.6billion of capital investment for mayoral authorities in the North and Midlands, saying she wanted ‘renewal for our country’.
The package includes funding to extend the metros in Tyne and Wear, Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, along with a renewed tram network in South Yorkshire and a new mass transit systems in West Yorkshire.
The borrowing-funding splurge on major investment is being overshadowed by intense haggling over day-to-day budgets.
Ms Reeves is due to announce spending plans for the next three years in a week’s time, but several Cabinet ministers have yet to reach settlements with the Treasury.
Tensions with Home Secretary Yvette Cooper surfaced today with warnings that cuts for police will mean some crimes effectively being ignored.
Ed Miliband is also embroiled in horse-trading over Net Zero funding, while Angela Rayner is said to be holding out over cash for housing and local government.
In a letter to Keir Starmer, Metropolitan Police chief Mark Rowley said there would be ‘far-reaching consequences’ from inadequate funding.
The letter, also signed by other senior police officers, voiced alarm that negotiations between the Treasury and the Home Office were going ‘poorly’.
‘A settlement that fails to address our inflation and pay pressures would entail stark choices about which crimes we no longer prioritise,’ it read according to The Times.
Meanwhile, in a separate letter, Domestic Abuse Commissioner for England and Wales Dame Nicole Jacobs and Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales Baroness Newlove wrote to Sir Keir saying victim support services are being ‘pushed to the brink’, hit by funding cuts and rising costs.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said Ms Reeves faces ‘unavoidably tough decisions’ next week as the demands of NHS and defence spending raise the prospect of cuts in other departments.
Last week, senior police officers – including Sir Mark – wrote a letter in the Times calling on the Government for ‘serious investment’ in the spending review, which will set out the Government’s day-to-day departmental budgets for the next three years.
‘A lack of investment will bake in the structural inefficiencies for another three years and will lose a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform the service,’ the letter warned.
Sir Mark also voiced his concern that fewer criminals serving jail time under proposals to end prison overcrowding will ‘generate a lot of work for police’.