The Chancellor should take responsibility for her “bad choices” rather than blaming others for the state of the country’s finances, Helen Whately has said.
Speaking to GB News, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary hit out at Rachel Reeves for laying blame on former Prime Minister Liz Truss, stating that Labour’s 2024 Budget “made everything worse in the economy”.
Delivering a speech today ahead of her fiscal statement, the Chancellor said she will “make the choices necessary” to deliver strong foundations for our economy for “years to come.”
She said: “My opponents will tell you that they could do more. Reform promised savings from our public services.
Helen Whately hit out at Rachel Reeves for laying blame on the Tories for the ecomony
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PA / GB NEWS
“And yet in Kent County Council, and councils they run across Britain, apparently they can’t find a single penny and instead plan to increase council tax on more than two million people.”
Criticising the Chancellor’s speech, Mrs Whately told GB News: “Actually, there were two things that really struck me, from what we heard from Rachel Reeves this morning.
“One is that she was trying to blame everybody else, anyone but herself, for the situation that she’s in, the economy’s in.
“But actually the situation we’re in is because of her decisions, because of Labour’s choices, because of all the things they got wrong at the last Budget, things that they did, like putting up the cost of jobs, putting up the cost of employment, putting up the cost of borrowing, putting up the cost of living.
“It’s their fault, and Rachel should take responsibility for those choices that she made.”
She added: “The other thing that really struck me about what she said this morning is that she talked again about she wants to make savings from welfare, but there she’s clearly at odds from her party, indeed her own secretary of state for welfare, just last week, they ruled out making any savings from their review of sickness benefits, and the secretary of state for welfare refused to even use the word savings in Parliament.
Rachel Reeves has refused to confirm if she will break Labour’s manifesto commitments at her Budget
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PA
“There’s a huge gap between what the Chancellor is saying on welfare and what her party is saying.”
Defending the legacy of the Conservatives in handling Britain’s economy, Mrs Whately explained: “Our legacy in Government was that we brought the public finances under control, we brought the deficit down, we brought unemployment down.
“Then the pandemic hit, and then, yes, debt did go up because we wanted to keep the economy going to make sure that people had money to live off, when we had the worst pandemic for a century.
“Then after that, hard choices had to be made. But none of this should have come as any surprise to the Chancellor.”
Taking aim at Ms Reeves, the Tory Secretary stated: “She knew about all of that before they got into Government.
“There’s no reason for them to be using that sort of thing as an excuse for potentially breaking a manifesto promise.
“And in fact, what happened at the Chancellor’s last Budget is they made everything worse in the economy.
Mrs Whately told GB News that the economy was made ‘worse’ after Labour’s 2024 Budget
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GB NEWS
“They talked the economy down. They made taxes go up, they increased the cost of employing people.
“They’re the ones who have actually been driving up unemployment and driven up inflation. So that’s where Rachel should be taking responsibility for her bad choices.”
Hitting back at the Chancellor for blaming Liz Truss, Mrs Whately fumed: “She’s wrong on that, and she’s just trying to lay blame on other people.
“It’s her decisions that have driven up borrowing costs in that way, and she should take that on the chin and be straight with people.
“The other situation she’s got is she simply cannot control public spending. In fact, potentially, they’re going to spend even more on that, and they can’t control welfare spending.
“There’s a huge contrast to the plans that we’ve been setting out, that Kemi Badenoch has been talking about, our £47billion savings that we can see can be made from public spending so that you can start reducing the deficit and reducing the tax burden, very specifically on welfare.”
Mrs Whately concluded: “I’ve been saying that we should be making £23billion worth of savings, including making savings from the sickness benefits that people are claiming for common mental health problems, like anxiety, like ADHD, things I’ve noticed Nigel Farage is picking up on.
“We’ve been setting out our plans of what we would do differently. I say to Rachel Reeves, she should listen to us and do some of those things.”