One Budget delivered, one warned of
- Real UK: Inflation rose to 3.1% and Andy Burnham warned of difficult decisions in next month's Budget, the Guardian reports.
- Parallel UK: My government presented its Budget, funding £0.6bn of debt interest and a £320m winter guarantee from the contingency reserve.
- The argument: Prison capacity comes from places, not from a second bed in a cell built for one.
- The Guardian reports UK inflation rose to 3.1%, and that Andy Burnham warned of "difficult decisions" in next month's Budget.
- Leaked emails reveal plans to "double up" prisoners in temporary prefabricated cells built for one person, the Guardian reports in an exclusive.
- Ministers have agreed to fully fund the teachers' pay increase in England, so schools will not have to meet part of the cost from their own budgets, the Guardian reports.
A pay award that schools must part-fund is a cut to those schools by another name. The real government did the right thing here.
Places come from building and from a release policy with the risk evidence published. In the parallel estate, the first of two converted sites takes 400 prisoners on Monday 30 November. The second takes 350 on Monday 11 January. A second bed changes the rating on the door, not the size of the cell.
Machinery — Its two unfunded items are now funded from the contingency reserve: £0.6bn of extra debt interest, and the winter-guarantee extension, repriced at today's forward prices to £320m. The reserve falls from £4.0bn to £3.08bn with six months of the year left. That is the cost, and it is not small: the next shock is met by a tax rise or a cut.
Energy — The winter guarantee now reaches the 6m household target.
sober; the Budget cleared Cabinet on the reserve figure, and nobody called it a good day.
Next dispatch: tomorrow 6pm — the Budget vote result; the real Bank of England decision.