Chancellor hoping to tackle a longstanding bugbear - UK's catastrophically low productivity

Labour's key priority is fixing the NHS, which will see a 2.7% a year real-terms increase in its budget over three years

- Heather Stewart

Blackpool, Cardiff, Kirkcaldy, Teesside: Rachel Reeves's spending review speech was peppered with more regional shout-outs than a drivetime radio show. Changing her fiscal rules in the autumn freed up £113bn for extra capital investment over five years - by allowing the Treasury to offset financial assets against its debts.

Yesterday's statement, therefore, included significant investment in what Reeves called "Labour choices": in particular, rekindling regional economies outside London and the south-east.

Not coincidentally, these include areas that could prove vulnerable to Reform UK.

Her plans would, she claimed, "make working people in all parts of our country better off".

She hailed defence investment as a way of creating jobs and growth "in Aldermaston and Lincoln; in Portsmouth and Filton; on the Clyde and in Rosyth".

There is a rationale behind this capital-heavy approach: economists broadly agree that a key cause of the UK's catastrophically weak productivity - the specialist subject of Reeves's chief economic adviser John Van Reenen - is low investment.