00:00Well, I'm not going to pre-empt what comes in the spring statement tomorrow, but I reject
00:04the idea that this government is imposing austerity.
00:09You'll know the previous government, when it took office, cut overall public spending.
00:13We have allocated in the budget last year ÂŁ290 billion of public spending, and that's
00:18allowed us, for example, to invest ÂŁ26 billion in our NHS, bringing down waiting lists now
00:24for five months in a row.
00:26So terms like austerity can be very easily bandied around, but that is not what's happening
00:30here.
00:31I reject that assertion entirely.
00:33Departmental settlements will come in the spending review later this year, but under
00:39this government, day-to-day spending will be 3.3 per cent this year, be an increase
00:44in real terms throughout this Parliament again.
00:46What we're not seeing here is austerity, but we do have a very challenging fiscal context.
00:51Absolutely, there's no question about that, and difficult choices will have to be made.
00:56I'm not going to speculate again, if you'll forgive me, on OBR forecasts.
00:59We'll see those in the spring statement tomorrow, but we are taking very decisive action to
01:04turn around 14 years of stagnation and low growth.
01:09In Parliament just yesterday, for example, we passed the second reading of the Planning
01:12and Infrastructure Bill, a bill that will streamline the delivery of new homes and critical
01:16infrastructure and will unleash growth across the country.
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