The Chancellor Rachel Reeves is delivering her Budget. Here we will post a selection of responses from the Opposition and ThinkTanks.
Drip, drip, drip. In the run up to Labour’s Budget there was leak after leak of all the tax measures Reeves was considering, so it is only fitting that almost an hour before she rose to announce the full Budget in the Commons chamber, the Office for Budget Responsibility’s (OBR) economic and fiscal outlook was accidentally published in an unprecedented leak.
Numerous Tory MPs, with the OBR report on their phones, were waving it at the Prime Minister and the Chancellor from the opposition benches. Up from the press gallery you could hear the hoards of Tory MPs heckling: “She should resign.”
Once Reeves sits down, it will be Tory Party leader Kemi Badenoch’s time to do her first Budget response for the opposition. With shadow chancellor Mel Stride sat to her left, shadow chancellor to the duchy of Lancaster Alex Burghart and shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith to her right, and former Treasury minister now PPS John Glen behind her, she has been receiving updated lines to go on the attack.
Her policy chief Neil O’Brien recently passed over a folder detailing the key points from the leaked OBR report, meaning for the first time the Leader of the Opposition will be able to deliver the Budget response with full facts and figures – usually there is no advanced sight.
Fundamentally, as we now know from the leaked OBR report, the tax-burden will hit an all-time high and welfare spending will continue to rise. Best of luck everyone.
The post BUDGET: Labour is taking tax burden to all-time high – Tory MPs and think tank reactions appeared first on Conservative Home.
