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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Later this week the Chancellor will announce his comprehensive spending review setting Whitehall budgets for the next four years.  Public services will face another round of cuts with unprotected departments having to find billions of pounds of savings.  Mr Osborne has promised he will set out ways to protect millions of working families from the effects of his controversial cuts to tax credits and I’m joined now by Matthew Hancock, the government’s Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office, a very good morning to you Mr Hancock.  So I described some of the problems for the Chancellor on Wednesday, the deficit is falling more slowly, the revenues don’t seem to be coming in in their expected numbers, you’ve got departments, unprotected departments putting up resistance to their budgets being cut fighting their corner, the tax credits mess and of course the security and defence issue.  How is the Chancellor going to square this circle?

MATT HANCOCK: Well clearly national security is at the heart of the spending review.  We’ve heard today that we’re going to see a 30% increase in the counter-terrorism budgets and also the newspapers are reporting, and the Chancellor confirmed this morning, increased numbers of jets to make sure that we can project military capability, so both defending at home and overseas.  So that is at the heart of what we are spending the money on but crucially you can’t have that sort of national security without an economic security based on balancing the books so there will be tough decisions in there too.  

DM: But within that security issue, we still hear that the Home Office has been in the firing line. Is the Chancellor then going to leave the police budget alone?  

MATT HANCOCK: Well no, I saw all this stuff about rows about the departments being settled, actually the spending review as I understand is settled and the question of how much we spend on each department is obviously central to it.  Increasing the counter terrorism element of the budget I think is very important and I am very glad we took the decision – we took the decision in July both to spend 2% of national income on defence and to increase the counter terrorism budget and since then the question has been how do we best spend that money rather than the overall level on this.

DM: People would say in terms of the domestic threat, one of the front line defences is the police force and now would not be a good time to be seen to be cutting spending on police forces as many serving and former members of the police have been warning.  

MATT HANCOCK: Well yes and no, even the last parliament we managed to cut spending on police but thanks to the police improving the way that they work, increasing efficiencies, we ended up with more community police officers and crucially a very significant drop in crime so of course it’s always easier to run a budget when there is loads of money around and there isn’t a load of money around and to protect the future of our economy and to not leave debts to our children and grandchildren, we need to have that economic security and get into balance.  So yes of course, life is always easier when there’s more money around but when there is less, actually in the last parliament the police did a terrific job and then crucially on the counter terrorism element, we have announced that that will go up.

DM: Let me just ask you finally about a vote on the UK participating in air strikes in Syria against Islamic State, we’re hearing that’s getting closer and closer.  Would you personally like to see that as soon as possible and the RAF getting in the air over Syria?

MATT HANCOCK: Well I’d like to see a vote when we can win it.  I voted for action two years ago, I think it was a mistake that the House of Commons said no then and I hope we do get a position where we can unwind that but I think it’s really important to explain the reason and the reason is that ISIL is a clear and present danger to the streets of the UK as well as to the streets of Paris as we saw and we need to destroy them, not only in Iraq where we can currently take action but also in Syria and I think that’s important and I hope that we get the opportunity to vote but I can also entirely understand why the Prime Minister only wants to call that vote when we can be sure that we can win it.

DM: Okay, Paymaster General, thank you very much indeed, very good to see you.  Matthew Hancock there.