Andrew Neil has blasted Chancellor Rachel Reeves with scathing criticism (Image: Getty)
Political commentator Andrew Neil has issued a scathing attack on Labour and told the party to “grow up” for the state of the nation.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves yesterday gave a statement saying that she'd discovered that the former Conservative Government had been hiding a black hole in public finances to the tune of ￡22bn.
Reeves used the opportunity to nod through big public sector pay rises for teachers and NHS staff - which will cost the taxpayer ￡3.5bn - as well as an inflation-busting 22 percent hike in pay for junior doctors. She also whisked away winter fuel help for those pensioners not on benefits.
In a column for the Daily Mail, Neil called Reeves’s new apparent disgust at what had been unveiled since taking a closer look at the books as “the oldest sleight of hand in the political playbook”.
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Chancellor Rachel Reeves said the Conservatives covered up as ￡22bn black hole (Image: Getty)
He added: “It's not clear why she missed it. Nobody else did.”
Neil pointed to the Institute for Fiscal Studies warning during the election that future fiscal sums did not add up - estimating the shortfall at around ￡20 billion. He says that The Office for Budget Responsibility had also previously warned that some future funding projections were looking shaky.
There were no tax rises announced yesterday - but Neil predicts these will come in her first Budget on October 30, believing that capital gains and inheritance taxes could be hiked as well as “major cuts in pension tax relief”.
He added: “Britain has a recovering economy, political stability and strong government. Such assets are in short supply across the rest of Europe.
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“Labour needs to grow up and start exploiting these advantages with the serious business of government.”
As well as scrapping changes to winter fuel payment eligibility, Reeves also announced that planned capital projects would be checked to see if they should still go ahead.
Responding to Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s speech, Sam Richards, CEO of pro-growth campaign group Britain Remade, said: “It’s absolutely right that the new Chancellor wants to check every infrastructure project is delivering value for money for taxpayers, but cutting capital spending isn’t risk free.
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"There are some projects in the Restoring our Railways fund - like the Tavistock railway line - that are vital to delivering prosperity in parts of the country that don’t get the same focus as London and the South East.
"As the Government reviews these projects, we’ll be making the case for those that we think are best value for money.
“Keir Starmer made kickstarting economic growth and making Britain a clean energy superpower the top two missions for his government, but neither of these will be achieved if economy boosting clean infrastructure projects are delayed or cancelled."