Rachel Reeves laid into Jeremy Hunt this morning and accused him, and his fellow Tories, of “lying” during their election campaign.
The chancellor was speaking to the press after she revealed a ”£22bn black hole” in the public finances left behind by the previous government, who she claims, covered it up.
“Are you saying that Jeremy Hunt is a liar?” Sky News’ host Wilfred Frost asked.
“Jeremy Hunt covered up from the House of Commons and the country the true state of public finances,” Reeves said. “He did that knowingly and deliberately.”
“So he’s a liar? If he did that knowingly and deliberately, he’s a liar,” Frost said.
The chancellor replied: “He lied and they lied during the election campaign about the state of the public finances.
“The worst thing is Wilf, it’s even worse than that – during the election campaign, I was really clear that everything I was putting forward was fully costed and fully funded.
“We had these changes in our manifesto which set out the limited tax changes we were going to make, and how that would pay for, for example, 40,000 appointments extra in the NHS.
“The Conservatives during the election campaign said they were going to cut National Insurance further; they were going to create a National Citizenship service; that they were going to cut taxes on pensioners, that they were going to change the rules on child benefit – all the while knowing there was a £22bn black hole in the public finances.
“It is beyond reckless and irresponsible.”
She said trust in politics was already at an “all-time low” after partygate and after the government awarded contracts to friends and donors of the Conservative Party during the pandemic.
“Misleading people in a general election about what was possible… they should never be able to have power on our public finances again,” Reeves said.
Frost then pointed out that £9bn of the £22bn Reeves has mentioned is a “choice”, because Labour has decided to give public sector workers a pay rise.
She replied that the cost of rejecting the pay review bodies’ advice would only hit the economy anyway in the form of the industrial action.
Reeves also took aim at Hunt – now shadow chancellor – in the Commons on Monday, saying that he takes “no responsibility”.
“The word the country was looking for, today, was sorry. The shadow chancellor could not find those words,” she said.
