Minister says spending review will mark ‘end to austerity’, as Home Office yet to agree deal – UK politics live | Politics

Keir Starmer has been speaking at a London Tech Week event this morning, and he has announced that by next spring the government will roll out a new AI tool for councils allowing them to digitise planning documents within minutes. The government says this tool, developed using Google DeepMind’s Gemini model, will free up thousands of hours of officers’ time.

In a news release, Downing Street explains:

For the first time, this cutting-edge technology will help councils convert decades-old, handwritten planning documents and maps into data in minutes – and will power new types of planning software to slash the 250,000 estimated hours spent by planning officers each year manually checking these documents. This will dramatically reduce delays that have long plagued the system.

Around 350,000 planning applications are submitted a year in England, yet the system remains heavily reliant on paper documents – some hundreds of pages long. Once submitted, each of these documents needs to be manually validated and approved by a planning officer.

In test trials across Hillingdon, Nuneaton & Bedworth, and Exeter councils, Extract digitised planning records, including maps, in just three minutes each – compared to the 1–2 hours it typically takes manually. This means Extract could process around 100 planning records a day – significantly speeding up the process.

This represents a step-change in productivity, freeing up thousands of hours for planning officers to focus on decision-making to speed up housebuilding. It will also accelerate the delivery of much-needed housing, improve reliability in the planning process and reduce costs and save time for councils and developers.

Extract is expected to be made available to all councils by spring 2026. The government’s ambition is to fully digitise the planning system – making it faster, more transparent, and easier to navigate for working people, councils, businesses and developers.

For Starmer, this is familiar territory. As director of public prosecutions, one of his achivements he talks about most was digitalising court records.

Starmer also confirmed a £187m programme to extend AI teaching in schools.

Good morning. In theory spending review negotiations can go up to the wire, with the final talks to resolve sticking points taking place late at night, only hours before the decisions, and documents, are presented to MPs. In practice, it does not really happen like that now, last-minute haggling is no longer routine, and, with two days to go before the spending review that will settle government spending until 2019, only one cabinet minister has not yet settled.

Here are the key developments this morning on the issue that will dominate the week.

• Angela Rayner, the deputy PM and housing secretary, settled with the Treasury late last night. The news was broken by Arj Singh from the i, who reports:

The i Paper understands that Rayner and Reeves agreed a deal just after 7.30pm after marathon talks on Sunday.

But Home Office and Treasury sources were tight lipped on Sunday, in an indication that negotiations over police funding are also going to the wire.

• That means Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, is the only minister yet to agree a spending settlement with the chancellor, Rachel Reeves. In the Times Chris Smyth says police budgets are expected to rise by more than inflation, but other parts of the Home Office budget may face cuts. He reports:

It is understood that Reeves has insisted that policing budgets will rise in each year of the spending review, which sets funding up to 2028-29. However, it remains unclear if the boost will match the more than £1 billion extra officers say is needed to cover existing shortfalls.

Cooper is also expected to have to find deeper cuts elsewhere to boost police budgets. The Border Force has warned of longer queues at airports as it faces cuts to its £1.2 billion budget, saying there would be a “threat to national security” if it lost frontline staff.

• Two police unions have launched a last-minute bid for extra money. In an article in the Daily Telegraph, Nick Smart, president of the Police Superintendents’s Association, and Tiff Lynch, acting chairman of the Police Federation of England and Wales, say:

Police are being asked to do more with less – again – as pressure mounts on already overstretched budgets.

Why? Policing faces a £1.2 billion shortfall. This is before it is asked to deliver the ambitious pledges of the new government.

Police forces across the country are being forced to shed officers and staff to deliver savings.

These are not administrative cuts. They go to the core of policing’s ability to deliver a quality service: fewer officers on the beat, longer wait times for victims, and less available officers when a crisis hits.

As a practical lobbying exercise, this is fairly pointless, because it comes too late, but the two unions are making their case to the public.

• Chris Bryant, the culture minister, has said that the spending review will mark “an end to austerity”. He told Times Radio:

We know from running the government that spending money of itself isn’t an achievement. Spending money and getting results is an achievement and that’s why we are saying now with this spending review on Wednesday it’s an end to austerity …

That period of austerity where I think previous governments simply cut all public service budgets just because they believed that was what you had to do is over.

But he also said some budgets would be “stretched”. He said health and defence spending would rise, but added:

There are going to be other parts of the budget that are going to be much more stretched and be difficult.

Ministers have been promising the end of austerity at least since Theresa May was in office. Labour defends using this phrase on the grounds that overall government spending is going up in real terms. But there is no agreed definition of “austerity” and, if spending is falling in certain areas, that may feel like austerity, and so using the term does not contribute a lot to public debate. What it does mean, though, is that governments saying they are ending austerity definitely don’t want to be associated with George Osborne.

Here is our overnight story about the spending review.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Keir Starmer gives a speech at a London Tech Week event.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Noon: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, gives a speech at Port Talbot in south Wales.

2.30pm: Angela Rayner, the deputy PM and housing secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

Also, Starmer is meeting Mark Rutte, the Nato general secretary, in Downing Street today.

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