We are in a strange interregnum between now and the autumn Budget as secretaries of state battle behind the scenes with the Treasury over budgets for the forthcoming year and leading into the next Spending Review. The outcomes will have a big impact on workforces across local government and the wider public sector. So far the NHS with its £114bn annual budget appears to have emerged as a winner with the Prime Minister pledging £20bn a year by 2023/24，though there is no evidence of how this extra cash is to be sourced. There was no mention of social care and the long-awaited Green Paper on care has been postponed - to no one's surprise - also until 'the autumn' presumably to dovetail with any Budget announcement. The defence lobby meanwhile has been mounting a vociferous campaign to increase the percentage of GDP spent on defence from 2% to 3% or in total £60bn a year.
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