Starmer to back Budget after Reeves accused of misleading public
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will back the Chancellor’s Budget in his speech on Monday, pledging the government to move “increasingly faster” on pro-growth measures.
He will say Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ announcement will help ease cost-of-living pressure, reduce inflation and ensure economic stability.
It comes as the Treasury faces questions over whether it has been transparent about the state of the public finances in the run-up to the Budget.
Conservatives claimed that Reeves misled the public by being overly pessimistic about the economic outlook, while official forecasts painted a more optimistic picture.
No. 10 denied that Reeves misled voters and defended his statement.
The prime minister will argue that “economic growth has exceeded forecasts” despite the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) downgrading next year’s growth rating, but the government needs to do more to encourage this.
Sir Keir is expected to say that protecting investment and public services will further boost financial growth.
The Prime Minister will also pledge to cut “unnecessary bureaucracy” in infrastructure after a report revealed the UK has become the most expensive place in the world to build nuclear energy infrastructure.
He will call for reform of the sector and urgent remediation of “fundamentally misguided environmental regulation”.
Business Secretary Peter Kyle will be tasked with applying the lessons learned from the nuclear energy report more broadly to infrastructure.
The Prime Minister’s speech on Monday, just five days after the Budget, may indicate some concern about how the government’s economic plans are received by the public, but No 10 says an announcement is already being planned.
In the days since the budget was announced, Downing Street has been forced to publicly back Reeves, who has been accused by political opponents of paving the way for tax rises by repeatedly warning that Britain’s economic productivity forecasts would be slashed.
In a letter to MPs on Friday, the OBR chief revealed he had told the chancellor on September 17 that the public finances were in better shape than generally thought.
Conservatives accused Reeves of giving an overly pessimistic impression, viewing public finances as a “smokescreen” to raise taxes.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said the letter showed Reeves was “lying to the public” and should be sacked.
Last week a Treasury spokesman said: “We will not go into the OBR’s processes or speculate about how this relates to internal decision-making in creating the Budget, but the Chancellor has made his choices to cut the cost of living, shorten hospital waiting lists and provide double headroom to reduce the cost of our debt.”
Both the Chancellor and Badenoch are scheduled to appear on the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg program on Sunday.
