Nick Ferrari Asks Why Chancellor Has Given More For Potholes Than Police
30 October 2018, 08:45
Philip Hammond explained to Nick Ferrari why he gave more money to potholes than to police officers in yesterday's Budget.
The Chancellor gave an additional £160million to the police, while allocating £420million to local councils for fixing potholes.
But speaking to Nick Ferrari, Mr Hammond explained that the difference between a one-off payment to mend roads as opposed to an on-going funding of public services.
Nick asked him: "Why would you choose to spend more money on potholes than you would police officers?"
Mr Hammond responded: "They are completely different things. That [the £160m police funding] was a very specific funding for 19/20 for our counter-terrorist policing to enable counter-terrorism police officer numbers to be maintained through next year.
"When you fund police officers or doctors or nurses or school teachers, that's an on-going commitment. You have to fund that year after year after year.
"What I did yesterday was took some money that we had available this year only, one-off and gave some of it to local authorities to fix potholes, which hopefully once they are fixed, they are fixed, they don't need doing again.
"Quite different things."
