So tell us about, uh, migration and public spending.

I think it's gonna be useful to distinguish three types of spending briefly.

That is spending on kind of general public services, spending on specific public services, and in particular kind of asylum services, and benefit spending So we'll, we'll maybe we'll go one by one.

So spending on general public services, you know, migrants, like the rest of us, typically will use the NHS.

If they have children, they'll use the school system, you know, the justice system.

Lots of parts of the state will be used by migrants.

Um, and indeed, it's worth noting, often migrants, both immigrants and emigrants, will have worked or will work for the state.

Tell us a bit about what, what the, what the OBR thinks about sort of the net effects on average and what it means for this particular budget in, in the autumn.

So Max, what is the current landscape for spending, and what big decisions is the government facing up to?

I think you're right.

You don't have to raise tax, but of course, if you don't want to think about tax, you have to think about spending.

And I think the spending situation is also challenging, like the tax.

That's what makes it hard, I think, for the Prime Minister as a whole, is that all of these different angles are looking quite challenging.

So on the spending side, I'm gonna focus on departmental spending.

This is broadly spending on public services like the NHS, schools, transport, defense, all of those kind of things.

So what is going on? What's happening with this defense investment plan?

So talk us through what's, what's due to happen to public service spending across the rest of the parliament.

So as we've talked about the deficit, this difference between tax and spending, one of the key levers you have as a government is to think about that spending side.

And a really important, certainly not the only part of spending, but an important part of spending is public service spending.

So things like on the NHS, education, defense, local government, all of those kind of things.

Now, I think important context is when this government came into office, they increased public service spending quite a lot.

Previous plans from the previous government were implying very slow rates of spending, and the government topped them up quite substantially.

Um, and then over the rest of this parliament, spending has been and is set to continue to grow.

How confident are we feeling so far about whether there's any signs of rays of hope there?