{"id":605061,"date":"2025-12-01T10:19:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T10:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/605061\/"},"modified":"2025-12-01T10:19:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T10:19:11","slug":"minister-insists-reeves-did-not-mislead-public-in-budget-build-up-as-starmer-to-make-speech-on-welfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/605061\/","title":{"rendered":"Minister insists Reeves did not mislead public in Budget build-up as Starmer to make speech on welfare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reeves denies misleading the public with pre-Budget messagingpublished at 07:08 GMT<\/p>\n

07:08 GMT<\/p>\n

Media caption, <\/p>\n

Laura Kuenssberg presses Rachel Reeves on whether the public was misled before Budget<\/p>\n

Reeves is facing accusations that she misled the public in the lead-up to the Budget, by suggesting the public finances were in a worse state than they actually were.<\/p>\n

In a pre-Budget speech on 4 November, Reeves strongly hinted at tax rises, saying she would make the “necessary choices”<\/a>. <\/p>\n

It was “clear” that the UK’s productivity performance was “weaker than previously thought”, Reeves said.<\/p>\n

But a letter from the OBR, external<\/a>, sent to MPs on Friday, has – her critics say – challenged this narrative.<\/p>\n

It reveals that a forecast of higher wages would help offset the effects of the productivity downgrade – something Reeves did not mention.<\/p>\n

It also appears she was on track to meet her fiscal rules by 2029\/30.<\/p>\n

On 31 October, the OBR told the Treasury it was on course to meet its rule of not borrowing to fund day-to-day spending – albeit by \u00a34.2bn less than the \u00a39.9bn in “headroom” (or “buffer”) Reeves left herself last year.<\/p>\n

Reeves delivered her pre-Budget speech just four days later.<\/p>\n

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said the letter showed Reeves had “lied to the public” and should resign.<\/p>\n

Reeves has denied misleading the public. “I clearly could not deliver a budget with just \u00a34.2bn of headroom,” she told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg on Sunday<\/a>, saying that would have been “the lowest surplus any chancellor ever delivered”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Reeves denies misleading the public with pre-Budget messagingpublished at 07:08 GMT 07:08 GMT Media caption, Laura Kuenssberg presses…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-605061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115643807469399862","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}