Rachel Reeves: ‘I was wrong’ to say no major tax rises would be needed
In her first big interviews since last week’s Budget announced tax rises of £40 billion, Rachel Reeves claimed this morning that she had been unaware of the extent of the ‘huge black hole’ in public finances before the election. On Sky News, Reeves told Trevor Phillips: ‘I was wrong… I didn’t know everything’. The Chancellor said the Conservatives had hidden the reality of the situation from the country, and that she’d had to put public finances back on a ‘firm trajectory’.
Reeves: ‘We have wiped the slate clean… it’s now on us’
The Chancellor told Trevor Phillips that her choices in the Budget represented a clean slate after the ‘mismanagement and chaos’ of the previous government, and that there would be ‘no need to come back with another budget like this’. Phillips asked her if she could commit to no further tax increases for the rest of parliament. Reeves said she couldn’t ‘write five years worth of budgets’ today, but she made an ‘absolute commitment’ to not raise income tax, VAT or national insurance before the next election, as promised in Labour’s manifesto.
Kemi Badenoch: ‘a lot of the stuff around partygate… was overblown’
Since becoming the leader of the Conservative party, Kemi Badenoch has called for Tories to be ‘honest about the fact that we made mistakes, honest about the fact that we let standards slip’. Speaking to Laura Kuenssberg this morning about what went wrong for Boris Johnson, Badenoch said that the public had decided the government was not ‘looking out for them’. She went on to say though that there had been ‘perception issues’, and that she had not resigned over partygate, arguing that the regulations themselves had created a trap. Badenoch suggested that ‘churning over every single incident’ would not be helpful for the Tories.
Badenoch: ‘Economically (the Budget) is not coherent’
Kuenssberg asked Kemi Badenoch if she would reverse Reeves’ employer national insurance rises, and therefore take money away from the NHS. Badenoch rejected the question, saying funding for the NHS could be achieved in other ways. She claimed the budget was ‘not coherent’, and that employer costs would be passed over to the public as lower wages and higher prices. She also said that the Chancellor’s £22 billion black hole claim was ‘dishonest’. Badenoch claimed that the government’s extra borrowing would not leave the finances on a ‘stable footing’ as Reeves has suggested, and said that she would reverse the VAT hike on private schools, because it is a ‘tax on aspiration’, that won’t ‘raise any money’.
Julia Lopez: Leaving the ECHR may be on the cards under Badenoch
Speaking to shadow culture secretary Julia Lopez, Trevor Phillips pointed out that Kemi Badenoch had overcome a leadership candidate in Robert Jenrick who had campaigned on specific policies around leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, reducing the number of visas issued, and cutting international aid. Phillips asked if the Conservatives under Badenoch would not pursue the same policies. Lopez suggested that Badenoch would take a ‘rounded approach’ towards reducing immigration, but did not want to write a manifesto at this stage in parliament. However, Lopez admitted that leaving the ECHR and reducing visas may end up being part of the plan.
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