PM: 'No misleading' in pre-Budget comments from Reeves

ODN

Sir Keir Starmer has defended pre-Budget comments from his Chancellor saying "there was no misleading" the public regarding public finances, because the government were presented with economic data that suggested the Treasury had £16bn less than it expected. The Prime Minister says this is why Rachel Reeves believed she had to raise revenues through what the Prime Minister describes as "manifesto breaches". Report by Ketchs. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn

Transcript

00:00So we had on the one hand £16 billion less than we might otherwise have had.

00:03We had clear commitments that we'd made throughout the process as to what it was we were going to achieve.

00:09Therefore, against that backdrop, it was inevitable that we would always have to raise revenue.

00:16So there's no misleading there.

00:19During the overall process, the numbers improved.

00:24And there was a point at which we thought, myself included,

00:29that we might have to reach for a manifesto breach of some significance.

00:36I didn't want to get to that place, but I recognised we might have to.

00:41And as the process then continued, it became clear to me and others

00:46that we might be able to do what we needed to do with our priorities without that manifesto breach.

00:53And that's what we did with the fair and necessary decisions that we took.

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