LONDON - British finance minister Rishi Sunak will deliver a three-year spending review and a budget plan on Oct. 27 as he tries to reconcile demand for more spending on health and other services with his promise to fix the pandemic hit to the public finances.
The finance ministry said Sunak would outline his plans alongside Britain's latest official economic forecasts.
Including extra funding for health and social care announced earlier on Tuesday, core day-to-day spending, adjusted for inflation, would grow by nearly 4% per year over the course of the current, five-year parliament, the ministry said.
This represented the largest real-terms increase in spending of any parliament since 2001, it added.
Sunak said his Spending Review plan would keep the public finances on a sustainable path and did not envisage higher spending than announced so far.
Government departments would have to identify cuts of at least 5% from day-to-day budgets in order to free up funds for reinvestment in priority areas, the finance ministry said.