The Chancellor pointed to the Government’s record of not increasing VAT at the last budget, when asked if she would raise the tax.Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Rachel Reeves said: “We made that commitments for a reason, and those commitments stand. Judge me on my record, I had a budget last year and people said ‘Oh she’s not going to be able to honour those manifesto commitments’.
00:00First of all, we're facing a situation today where almost a million young people are not in education, employment or training.
00:09The impact of that, first of all, on them is devastating.
00:15We know that if you experience unemployment early on in your working life, you're more likely then to have other bouts of unemployment,
00:24earn less and also struggle with mental health problems.
00:26And so we want to nip this in the bud, which is why we're making this offer today.
00:33And in the first 18 months, of course, there'll be offers of education, of training, of one-to-one support to get a job.
00:40But this is a backstop, if you will, that if after 18 months those things haven't been successful,
00:46that offer, that guarantee of a work placement to show what you're worth, to show the difference you can make.
00:54And today, this announcement has been welcomed by business organisations.
00:59And ahead of the budget, I'm going to work with them on making sure that there are those jobs available.
01:04But we do have hundreds of thousands of job vacancies in the economy today.
01:09Many employers tell me that they struggle to recruit in a whole variety of sectors people with the skills that they need.
01:16This is something that the previous Labour government did, of course, with the New Deal for young people, the New Deal for the unemployed.
01:22This builds on that because we want to end once and for all that scourge of long-term youth unemployment.
01:28We made a commitment in our manifesto, and those commitments do stand.
01:33And they stand for a reason, because in the last parliament, it was ordinary working people who bore the brunt of the economic mismanagement,
01:41whether it was increases in interest rates or increases in prices in the shops.
01:47And that's why I'm determined that as we grow the economy, and we have had the fastest-growing economy in the G7,
01:53wages are rising faster than prices now.
01:55Of course there's more to do, but that's why we made those commitments to protect working people so they've got more money in their pockets.
02:04And I know that the cost of living challenges continue to bite and continue to be very real for many families right across our country,
02:12and that's why those commitments stand.
02:14Well, we made those commitments for a reason, and those commitments stand.
02:17And judge me on my record, I had a budget last year, and people said,
02:22oh, she's not going to be able to one of those manifesto commitments.
02:25But we did.
02:26I had to make some difficult decisions, but I protected the pay packets of working people, and we did not put up the prices in the shops.
02:34That's very important to me, because I do recognise still that the biggest challenge for families in all parts of the UK is the cost of living.
02:43And, you know, we have made progress in this first year.
02:47If someone had said 15 months ago that in the first 15 months of this Labour government,
02:52you'll have the fastest-growing economy in the G7, five cuts to interest rates, wages rising faster than the cost of living,
02:59those increases in the national living wage and the national minimum wage, I think people would have said that's not possible.
03:05But we did all of that without increasing the key taxes that working people pay,
03:09and that's why I stand by those commitments that I made in the manifesto,
03:13because I am absolutely determined that, unlike the last parliament, at the end of this parliament,
03:18working people are going to feel, in their bank balances, in their pockets, that they are better off.
03:24Well, what I would say is I've been Chancellor now for 451 days, and there's been difficult days.
03:31Some of them have been very public, but I wouldn't swap them for any of the 5,000 days that I spent in opposition before that,
03:39because every one of those 451 days has been an opportunity to change our country for the better.
03:43Whether it is the youth guarantee to help young people to get into work, those libraries in primary schools to ensure that all children get a good start in life,
03:53free breakfast clubs, extending free school meals, reducing NHS waiting lists by 200,000,
03:59increasing the national living wage and the national minimum wage,
04:02building more homes so that first-time buyers and families could have a stake in the housing market.
04:07I'm really proud of all these things.
04:09Has it been easy? No.
04:10I didn't go into this thinking it was going to be easy.
04:13I'm really proud of what we've done.
04:15I'm the first to admit there's more to do.
04:17We're 15 months into this government, and as the first Labour Chancellor in 14 years
04:21and the first female Chancellor in 800 years, I am genuinely loving this job and the chance to serve,
04:28because that's what I came into this for, just the chance to serve and make our country a bit better off.
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