Police in London face ‘eye-watering cuts’, Met chief Mark Rowley says - UK politics live

Good morning. We're two weeks on from the budget, and from the government's point of view it seems to have landed quite well. Nothing has unravelled, there have not been any U-turns (yet?) and Labour is confident that it has manoeuvred the Tories into a position where they are attacking the budget tax rises but backing the budget spending measures – an irrational position that is ultimately unsustainable.

But that does not mean budget-related problems for the government have gone away, as a quick look at today's front pages will show.

The Times is splashing a story about on ongoing complaints from business about the impact of the national inheritance tax increase. It says "a post-budget survey of 185 businesses by the CBI found that 61 per cent of companies polled had formed a negative view of [Rachel] Reeves's announcements, while 60 per cent said it had made Britain a less attractive place to invest."

The Daily Mail is splashing on a story about how councils in England will be allowed to raise council tax by up to 5% next year without holding a referendum. This is exactly the same cap that has been in place since 2022, but a 5% rise would now be above inflation, and the Conservatives are suggesting the cap should be lower.

Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, has given an interview to the BBC saying there will be "eye-watering cuts" to the police in London because of a lack of government funding. It is not unusual for people running big public service organisations to complain about their budgets when they are negotiating with Whitehall for money, but Rowley's comments are striking nevertheless. In an interview with Nick Robinson for his Political Thinking podcast Rowley said he was "deeply troubled" by the situation he was in. He explained:

This is not just about this year's decisions, but it's a cumulative effect of decisions over the last decade or so which have put us in a more and more precarious position.

Some of the things that successive commissioners and mayors have used to balance the books - like selling police stations and using reserves - all of those things have run out. So those are propped up the budget. Those props have gone.

The chancellor has been very clear - it's a difficult public sector context. You add all those things together and you get a dramatic change in budgets, and of a scale that's never going to be absorbed by efficiencies. And it's going to require some pretty eye-watering cuts to the services we provide to London.

Rowley said he faced some "very, very difficult choices" and that these would become clear to the public "over the next few weeks".

The government says it will increase spending on the police next year, but individual force budgets have not been decided yet. It wants to talk about pension funds instead. Reeves is delivering her Mansion House speech tonight and, as Kalyeena Makortoff reports, she is going to announce plans to merge local government retirement schemes into "megafunds".

There is not much in the political diary for today, but no doubt the God of News will give us something to write about.

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