Rachel Reeves has implied she won’t rethink her Budget measures in the wake of backlash from business, saying: “We’ve made our decisions.”
The Chancellor appeared at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI)’s annual conference on Monday in a fireside chat with Keith Anderson, the chief executive of Scottish Power.
She was asked by ITV about the “unintended consequences” of her fiscal event, and whether she would “rethink any of the measures that you’ve announced?”
Reeves said: “It’s really important that the sums add up, and I’m determined to be the Chancellor that puts our public finances on a firm footing after all the instability that we’ve faced these last few years.
“We’ve made our decisions. I’ve had lots of feedback on the budget, but what I haven’t heard is any credible alternatives to what I did to put our public finances on that firm footing.”
Budget ‘good for jobs’
And defending her position, she stressed: “If you take the measures in the Budget in the round, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) said that unemployment falls, employment levels rise, wages rise, real household disposable incomes increase over the course of this Parliament.
“So if you take the measures that I set out in the Budget, in the round, it’s good for jobs and it’s good for growth.”
The Chancellor also told the CBI conference she would not be coming back to the despatch box to announce plans for more borrowing or further tax rises.
Asked if she could confirm there would be no more big tax rises on businesses, she said: “I faced a problem, and I faced into it, and we have now drawn a line under the fiction peddled by the previous government.
“We’ve put our public finances back on a firm footing, and we’ve now set the budgets for public services for the duration of this Parliament.
“Public services now need to live within their means because I’m really clear, I’m not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes.”
