John Healey, the Chancellor, tells ministers they must be ready to make budget cuts to fund new pledges made by Mayor Sadiq Burnham at the start of his premiership, according to multiple reports. The outlets say Healey warns there is no additional funding allocated to cover the costs of the new announcements and that departments will need to identify savings to pay for them.
The reports also describe the message as being communicated to ministers in a joint letter from the Chancellor and the Prime Minister. The letter reportedly stresses that new initiatives associated with Burnham’s pledges require further spending, but that the government does not have new money available to meet those costs through supplementary budgets.
While the specific pledges and the scale or timing of any cuts are not detailed in the provided summaries, the overall picture across sources is that ministers are instructed to plan within existing fiscal constraints, re-prioritising spending to ensure the new commitments can be financed.
