By The Guardian (World News) | Created at 2024-09-23 07:20:11 | Updated at 2024-09-30 07:27:24
1 week ago
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Reeves claims there will be no return to austerity, but refuses to say all departments will avoid real-terms cuts
Q: You have to raise another £16.5 or £17bn this year in spending cuts or tax rises to fill the black hole in the budget, based on the figures you presented to parliament in July.
Reeves says the figures do move around, but she does not contest the broad point Robinson is making.
Q: Can you say no department will have its budget cut in real terms?
Reeves says she is going through the figures now.
We’re doing the spending review in two parts. There will be the settlement for next year, made on October the 30th at the budget, and then next spring, we’ll be doing the settlements for the next two years.
Robinson says, if Reeves is not ruling out real term cuts to departments, then that suggests a return to austerity.
Reeves says there will be no return to austerity.
Q: But what does that mean, if departments face real-terms cuts?
Reeves says overall government won’t be cut in real terms.
Reeves interviewed on Today programme
Nick Robinson is interviewing Rachel Reeves on the Today programme.
Q: It’s been doom and gloom. Have you cheered up?
Reeves said she found a £22bn black hole cover up when she became chancellor. The Tories lost because the economy was in bad shape. People get that, she said.
But she said today she would be setting out the “prize” on offer if the economy revives.
Q: But businesses are saying they are not investing because you are talking the economy down.
Reeves said she was being “honest” about the scale of the challenge. But she was also setting out policies to reform the economy.
Good morning. Britain has a competitive national newspaper market which has many flaws but at least one advantage; with papers presenting wildly different takes on the same news every morning, readers get a daily reminder that life is complicated and that there are always alternative ways of interpreting the same events.
There is a good example. Yesterday the Labour party sent out some advance extracts from Rachel Reeves’ speech to the Labour conference today. The Times also got an article from Reeves, which said more or less the same thing, but with slightly different language.
The Daily Telegraph today is splashing on a story saying Reeves is delivering a message of pessimism.
But the Times is saying the opposite.
Both interpretations are defensible, although the Times’s is more in line with the message Reeves wants people to take away from the speech. At the Guardian we avoided this choice by focusing on a different aspect of the speech – Reeves’ confirmation that she will appoint a Covid corruption commissioner to recover
None of this will come easy. I would be doing a disservice to the British people if I did or said otherwise. However, I have never been more optimistic about our country’s fortunes. Britain lost confidence in the Conservative Party, but it has never lost confidence in itself. The prize on offer is immense. The future has never had so much potential. It now falls on all of us to seize it.
One minister said the party had spent too much time in government talking about its inheritance and not enough about what it will do with power.
“There’s a sense that there has been a bit much blaming the inheritance and not enough of anything else,” they said. “It’s all very well to say we need to fix the foundations, but people also want to know what the house will look like at the end of it all.”
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.15am: The conference opesn
9.30am: John Healey, the defence secretary, opens a “Britain Reconnected” debate
10am: Bev Craigh, the leader of Manchester city council, and Richard Parker, the West Midlands mayor, speak.
11.50am: Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary, speaks.
Noon: Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, gives her speech.
1.45pm: Conference reconvenes after lunch. Peter Kyle, the science secretary, opens a session on “Growth for Higher Living Standards”, followed by Louise Haigh, the transport secretary, at 1.50pm.
2.50pm: Ian Murray, the Scottish secretary, and Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, speak in a session on Scotland.
3pm: Eluned Morgan, the Welsh first minister, and Jo Stevens, the Welsh secretary, speak in a session on Wales.
3.10pm: Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland secretary, speaks.
3.15pm: Steve Reed, the environment secretary, opens a session on the clean energy mission, followed by Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, at 3.25pm.
4.30pm: Wes Streeting, the health secretary, speaks at an ‘in conversation’ event at a fringe meeting run by the Institute for Government thinktank.
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