PMQs: Starmer insists Reeves will be Chancellor for ‘many years to come’
Sir Keir Starmer has insisted Rachel Reeves will be Chancellor for “many years to come” as Kemi Badenoch lambasted her for losing the confidence of the markets.
During Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons, the Conservative leader hit out at Reeves, arguing: “The Prime Minister claims he has full confidence in the Chancellor, but the markets clearly do not.
“Yesterday the Chancellor repeated her promise to have just one budget per year to provide businesses with certainty.
“The talk in the City is that she can’t meet her fiscal rules, and there will need to be an emergency budget.
“So does the Prime Minister stand by the Chancellor’s commitment that there will be only one budget this year?”
Starmer hit back, saying that he did not have enough time to criticise previous Tory Chancellors.
He said: “She’ll be pleased to know the Chancellor will be in place for many, many years to come. She’ll outstrip that.
“If we all thought that politics was about cheap words, I could criticise their chancellors, but I don’t have enough time to go through all the chancellors that they had.
“We had one budget, that’s what we’re committed to, strong fiscal rules, that’s what we’ll stick to, unlike the party opposite.”
Starmer was also pushed to rule out any new tax rises this year after Reeves’ October Budget hiked taxes by some £40bn prompting outcry from businesses.
Badenoch cautioned: “Today the British Retail Consortium says two-thirds of businesses will have to raise prices to cope with his tax hike, his Chancellor ignored all the warnings and ploughed ahead with an unprecedented borrowing spree, leaving all of us more vulnerable.
“The Prime Minister refused to repeat his Chancellor’s promise that she would not come back for more, will he now rule out any new tax rises this year?”
Starmer did not explicitly rule it, replying: “We took the right and difficult decisions… decisions they did not have the courage to take, which left us in the mess in the first place.
“When it comes to tax, she knows very well the limits of what I can say from this despatch box, but we have an ironclad commitment to our fiscal rules.
“We can’t just tax our way out of the problems that they left us, which is why we put in place tough – they were howling at the spending decisions, they wouldn’t take them – and we’ll stick to those spending decisions and our focus is absolutely on growth.”