L

Lord Lansley (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 12 June 2025

Debate

Spending Review 2025

Contribution

My Lords, the Minister will recall the table to the spending review which lists the departmental expenditure limits. Within that there is a line for the reserve, which I assume is essentially the contingency reserve. I recall that, back in 2023-24, the contingency reserve was over £9 billion, and that was completely blown and we had to have supplementary estimates. The table shows that, for phase 2, the reserve is at 1% of the totals for DEL and does not increase over the three years: it goes from £6.7 billion, to £6.7 billion, to £7.1 billion. This seems to be an inadequate figure for contingency that far out and is not, as one would expect, a rising figure—a wedge of contingency—in the later years. I wonder whether the Minister might explain why that wedge does not appear as one would have expected.

More from Lord Lansley (Con)

Other recent Hansard contributions by the same speaker.

About Hansard

Hansard is the official verbatim record of proceedings in the UK Parliament. Every word spoken in the Commons and Lords is recorded and published — this page is a single contribution from that record.

Partner sites