Hello and welcome to the Green Alliance podcast. We're the charity and think tank that is all about

achieving ambitious leadership from the environment. My name is Sam Mervis. I'm head of Green

Renewal and run Green Alliance's economy theme. At Labour Party conference a couple of weeks ago,

Rachel Reeves, Labour Shadow Chancellor, fired the starting gun in the race

to be the Green Chancellor of the UK.

I'm not going to lie, Rishi Sunak, the current Chancellor, has yet to respond in earnest to that

starting gun.

But with the spending review, where he'll set out what government are spending, where for

the next three years, on October 27th, he does have a chance

to enter the race. So today on the Green Lights podcast, we're going to do something a little

bit different. We're going to put somebody into that hot seat, imagining they, not Rishi, not

Rachel, are the UK's first small G Green Chancellor.

How does a three-year spending review fit into a broader vision and one the Prime Minister has

recently articulated of a more sustainable, more productive and higher wage economy?

Something that perhaps values different things to pure GDP growth.

So there are few people better to assume that power to take the reins of Treasury, I think,

than our guest today. My name is Matthew Agarwalha. I'm an economist at the Bennett Institute

for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge. So we'll start out with the immediate.

I was wondering if you could set out, in your view, Matthew, why this spending review is so

important to a more sustainable direction for the UK economy?

So the first question is really what is the spending review and what purpose does it serve?

Basically, spending review is part of the UK's government budgeting framework,

...