Andrew MacKay (Bracknell, Conservative)

When he expects to announce arrangements for the next comprehensive spending review.

Liam Byrne (Chief Secretary, HM Treasury; Birmingham, Hodge Hill, Labour)

Departmental budgets are set until April 2011 and, as the Chancellor has made clear, he will set out more detail on his spending plans in the pre-Budget report.

Andrew MacKay (Bracknell, Conservative)

Can we have a guarantee that the arrangements for the spending review will be put in place very quickly? Obviously the people of this country will want to see detailed proposals from the Government ahead of the election.

Liam Byrne (Chief Secretary, HM Treasury; Birmingham, Hodge Hill, Labour)

As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has made clear, the public will be in no doubt about the choice between the two principal political parties and their spending plans at the next election. There is no precedent for when spending reviews should be carried out. They are an innovation that was introduced by this Government, and sometimes they have been produced a year before one spending review expires and sometimes two years before. At a time when there is a degree of uncertainty in the economy, as Mr. Mackay would admit, it would wrong to be too hasty about what budgets will look like in the year of the Olympics and thereafter.