Spending Review: George Osborne to pledge housing cash amid cuts
Spending Review: George Osborne vows 'economic and national security'
(35 minutes later)
George Osborne is to set out government spending plans up to 2020 shortly, including billions of pounds in cuts but also new money for housebuilding.
George Osborne says "economic and national security" are at the heart of his plans for the next four years, as he sets out his Spending Review.
The Autumn Statement and Spending Review will detail £20bn of cuts to Whitehall budgets and £12bn to welfare.
Health, schools and defence spending will go up - but police, local councils and other areas face big cuts.
But the chancellor will pledge almost £7bn to make housebuilding a priority, with more than 400,000 "affordable homes" to be built in England.
The chancellor must also find extra cash after his plans to cut £4.4bn from tax credits were blocked.
Plans to mitigate the effect of tax credit cuts have also been promised.
He earlier announced plans to hand billions to private developers to build 400,000 new homes in England.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said Conservative MPs were expecting a "serious pulling back" from the government on planned £4.4bn cuts to working tax credits, which were rejected by the House of Lords last month.
Mr Osborne is using his Autumn Statement and Spending Review to detail £20bn in budget cuts affecting a string of government departments - and £12bn in welfare cuts.
Mr Osborne, she added, would have to find a "awful lot of money" from elsewhere to cover the cost of any u-turn while some of his other spending decisions - in areas like policing and social care - were likely to be very "contentious".
He hopes to raise £5bn in a fresh crackdown on tax avoidance as part of his efforts to balance the nation's books by the next election in 2020.
The combined Autumn Statement and Spending Review, to be announced from 12.30 GMT, will set departmental spending limits for the next four years and give details of the government's taxation and deficit reduction plans.
He told MPs the Spending Review was designed to make Britain "the most prosperous and secure of all the major nations of the world".
Ministers have pledged to cut annual welfare spending by £12bn, and government departments have been asked to find a total of £20bn in savings under plans to achieve a £10bn budget surplus by 2019-2020.
Mr Osborne revised up slightly the UK's economic growth forecasts for next year to 2.4%.
The chancellor also hopes to raise £5bn with a crackdown on tax avoidance.
Speculation is rife about how he will find the cash to phase in tax credit cuts, after the House of Lords rejected his plans to slash the benefit payments to low paid workers from April.
Mr Osborne will promise to address a "crisis of home ownership in our country", pledging a "bold plan to back families who aspire to buy their own home".
The Treasury said the chancellor would unveil "the biggest affordable housebuilding programme since the 1970s".
It will include:
Stewart Baseley, executive chairman of the Home Builders Federation, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that attempts to stimulate supply in the last few years were beginning to feed through and recent housebuilding statistics, particularly in England, had been "very encouraging".
But Labour said the Conservatives' record had been one "of failure on every front" since 2010, with home ownership at its lowest level in a generation and a halving in the number of affordable homes to buy.
"If hot air built homes, then Conservative ministers would have our housing crisis sorted," said shadow housing minister John Healey.
"A matter of weeks ago the housing minister promised a million more homes, now George Osborne is saying they'll build 400,000 more. Rather than rate them on what they say they will do, people will judge them on what they've actually done."
Presented by Chancellor George Osborne, the Spending Review sets out what government spending will be over the next four years, while the Autumn Statement is an annual update of government plans for the economy.
Explained: Which government departments will be affected?
Analysis: Latest from BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
Special report: Full in-depth coverage of the Spending Review and Autumn Statement
Watch: The BBC's TV coverage begins on BBC Two and the BBC News Channel at 11:30 GMT, with BBC Radio 5 Live coverage from 11:55 GMT
The Treasury has already announced that front-line NHS services in England will get a £3.8bn, above-inflation, cash injection next year. Defence spending is to be increased, as set out in Monday's Strategic Defence and Security Review.
Schools and international aid will escape cuts but the other, unprotected departments are braced for reductions to their budgets.
These include local government, the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office, with police forces expected to face more cost-cutting.
Analysis
Analysis
By BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
By BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
This won't be a Spending Review, ministers say, that displays an attitude of cutting a little bit here and there, moving money around the balance sheet to try to smooth out the pain.
This won't be a Spending Review, ministers say, that displays an attitude of cutting a little bit here and there, moving money around the balance sheet to try to smooth out the pain.
Instead they see it as a programme of strategic cuts that, while difficult, add up to something: a country where work is rewarded, where anyone who wants to get on is helped to do so, and where the state has a careful approach to spending taxpayers' money, using it judiciously where it helps and not being afraid to scrape it back where it does not.
Instead they see it as a programme of strategic cuts that, while difficult, add up to something: a country where work is rewarded, where anyone who wants to get on is helped to do so, and where the state has a careful approach to spending taxpayers' money, using it judiciously where it helps and not being afraid to scrape it back where it does not.
But choosing priorities - not just protecting but substantially increasing spending on areas like health, significant new spending on housebuilding, including billions going directly to housebuilders to encourage them to get spades into the ground, and retaining what many see as generous welfare payments to the older generations - inevitably means others will lose out.
Read more from Laura
Read more from Laura
There have been warnings over the effect of further reductions in police spending, with one of the UK's most senior police officers saying cuts could jeopardise the UK's response to a Paris-style attack.
All eyes were on his economic forecasts, with some economists predicting he will miss his target to run a budget surplus by 2020, after worse than expected borrowing figures.
Prime Minister David Cameron has said the counter-terrorism budget will be protected.
But Mr Osborne told MPs his four-year public spending plans were forecast to deliver a surplus as well as falling debt in every year that follows.
Police and Crime Commissioner for Nottinghamshire Paddy Tipping told the BBC that he was expecting cuts to the police budget, which would mean police forces would "have to reduce very seriously police numbers" on top of "deep cuts" already made to the number of officers and PCSOs.
In his statement, the chancellor will tell MPs his economic plan for the next four years is about choosing priorities - and insist tackling the "crisis" in home ownership is crucial.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the chancellor's 2020 surplus target would require "some very substantive cuts to government departments over the next few years."
In a shift away from free market solutions, Mr Osborne will announce plans to hand £2.3bn directly to developers to build "starter homes" for first-time buyers, in a fresh attempt to reverse the long-term decline in house building.
Its director Paul Johnson said it would be "close to impossible to meet" if the economy "does even a little bit worse than he is expecting" unless some tax increases are put in place.
He will also pump £4bn into shared ownership schemes to provide more properties for households earning less than £80,000 (or £90,000 in London) who want to get on the housing ladder.
But the BBC's economics editor Robert Peston said the chancellor was a little less "boxed in" than some commentators believed and could reduce the £10bn figure while maintaining his overall economic strategy was still "on track".
The Treasury is calling it "the biggest affordable house-building programme since the 1970s" but Labour dismissed it as more rhetoric, saying: "If hot air built homes, then Conservative ministers would have our housing crisis sorted."
How will you be affected by the spending review? Do you have a question for our finance experts? Email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk with your stories and questions.
The Treasury has already announced that front-line NHS services in England will get a £3.8bn, above-inflation, cash injection next year, as part of an £8bn real terms increase over the course of the Parliament.
Defence spending is to be increased, as set out in Monday's Strategic Defence and Security Review. Schools and international aid will also escape cuts.
Presented by Chancellor George Osborne, the Spending Review sets out what government spending will be over the next four years, while the Autumn Statement is an annual update of government plans for the economy.
Explained: Which government departments will be affected?
Analysis: Latest from BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg
Special report: Full in-depth coverage of the Spending Review and Autumn Statement
Watch: The BBC's TV coverage begins on BBC Two and the BBC News Channel at 11:30 GMT, with BBC Radio 5 Live coverage from 11:55 GMT
How are you affected by the spending review? Do you have a question for our experts? Share your experiences. Email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk with your stories.
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