Rachel Reeves has been slammed by the Tories just minutes into her spring statement, as they accused her of repeating the exact same failures she made in her first Budget.
Taking to the Commons this lunchtime, the Chancellor confirmed her cuts are set to restore her so-called ‘fiscal headroom’.
In last year’s Budget, Ms Reeves gave herself a mere £9 billion allowance to buffer international shocks to the British economy and prevent her going into a spending deficit.
However this was criticised as being far too small, after it was entirely wiped out by changes to borrowing costs and Donald Trump’s economic instability.
In the Commons this afternoon, the Chancellor revealed that without making cuts, the OBR forecast she would have gone from a £9 billion surplus to a £4.1 billion deficit.
Due to the cuts she is announcing, she has managed to restore her original fiscal headroom.
However, the Tories have slammed this as yet more shortsightedness by the Chancellor.
Just minutes into the spring statement, the Conservatives’ shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith warned: “The Chancellor has learned nothing from the failure to provide enough headroom at her first Budget.”
Ms Reeves said: This Labour Government was elected to bring change to our country, provide security to working people and deliver a decade of national renewal.”
“That work began in July and I’m proud of what we have achieved in the last nine months.”
She cited cutting interest rates, bringing down waiting lists and increasing the national minimum wage as her biggest achievements since coming to power nine months ago.
However she insisted the current economic problems are not her doing, but a result of international pressures.
She insisted her fiscal rules are non-negotiable, dismissing calls by left-wing Labour MPs to borrow more money instead of cutting welfare.
She said her fiscal rules are the “embodiment of the government’s unwavering commitment to bring stability to the economy and uncertainty to British people”.
“There is nothing progressive, nothing Labour, about working people paying the price for economic irresponsibility.”
“Voters knew that I would never take risks with the public finances. We must earn that trust every single day.”
MORE TO COME…
