"Murray told colleagues that departments must take responsibility for managing pressures and making choices about priorities without relying on the reserve. He wrote: We must deliver the efficiency plans set out in June reducing administrative budgets, including those of arm's-length bodies and agencies and deliver comprehensive digital transformation. The Treasury reserve is a source of backup funds intended to be used by departments in genuinely unforeseen, unaffordable and unavoidable pressures."
"Starting under the previous Conservative government, the Home Office has repeatedly relied on an annual top-up from the reserve to cover the cost of the asylum system, claiming 4.3bn in 2023-24. The Home Office's claims on the reserve in 2023-24 made up more than a quarter of the department's total spending in that financial year, a larger proportion than for any other department. The Treasury's clampdown on this practice before the budget on 26 November forms an attempt to reduce government borrowing and keep departmental spending within the totals announced in the spending review in June."
James Murray, the chief secretary to the Treasury, has told cabinet ministers that departments cannot rely on the Treasury reserve for routine spending and must demonstrate that all cost-cutting options have been exhausted before any claim is considered. Departments are required to manage pressures, set priorities, and deliver the June efficiency plans to reduce administrative budgets across departments, arm's-length bodies and agencies, while pursuing comprehensive digital transformation. The reserve is intended only for genuinely unforeseen, unaffordable and unavoidable pressures, after being used recently for higher public-sector pay, military operations and compensation payouts. The clampdown aims to reduce government borrowing and keep spending within the totals set in the spending review, supporting the chancellor's borrowing rules.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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