Speeches by Reeves.

“Yes—the answer to John Glen’s question.”

“I believe in the numbers that I set out in my Budget. A lot of people had views of what I was going to do in my Budget and whether I would be able to live within the means set in my Budgets, but we have consistently done that, and we have increased the headroom. We also set out, just before the summer recess, our spend…”

“Yes, we have regular meetings with the growth mission board. I did not say in my answer to your question, as you suggested, that there were no growth measures in this Budget. Far from it. In the week of the Budget, we made further progress on the runway at Heathrow; we signed off the film studio in Marlow. Jamie Dimon,…”

“Not at all. The £22 billion black hole left by the previous Government, which we had to fill, was set out to me by Treasury officials on the weekend that I became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Then there was the £16 billion downgrade to productivity and the impact that that had on fiscal revenue. The Office for Budget R…”

“Well, they are not paying the same, are they?”

“The Prime Minister and I met two or three times a week during the Budget process. That is not always the case between Chancellors and Prime Ministers—I recognise that—but there is a very close partnership between myself and the Prime Minister. We took him through all the numbers and options, and we decided it together,…”

“First of all—we have been through this a number of times—there was new information after the general election: first, the £22 billion black hole in the public finances left by the previous Government.”

“A couple of things. First of all, in the speech on 4 November, I was very clear that everyone would have to make a contribution, and you saw that in the Budget on 26 November: we froze, for an additional three years, the tax thresholds—national insurance and income tax—that the previous Government had frozen for seven …”

“I was very up-front in my speech in Parliament, when I delivered the Budget, that that would mean everyone was having to contribute, in exactly the way that I set out in my speech on 4 November. So I very much stand by the speech I made. I said in that speech that we were going to cut the cost of living, and we did: 0.…”

“Yes, and—”

“Yes, there was, and the reason for that is that the OBR do costings of all the changes that we are making, as well as there being interactions between the tax measures and other economic variables, whether those be GDP, consumption or inflation, so all of this was changing. It was a big Budget—I think we can all agree …”

“The Prime Minister has been clear that that was one of the things that we looked at, but we were also looking at the tax thresholds. In the end, because of the decisions we made on higher value council tax, property, dividends and a number of other measures, we were able to keep the contribution from working people as …”

“Nothing if not predictable.”

“Of course, we wanted to reduce that inflation, which is exactly what we did, as the deputy governor of the Bank said to you yesterday, with 0.4 to 0.5 percentage points off inflation next year.”

“We are already embarking on the biggest uplift in defence spending since the end of the cold war, taking it to 2.6% by April 2027. Although every Department apart from the NHS and Defence has had to make some further efficiency savings towards the end of the Parliament, that is not the case—well, they have to make effi…”

“I think the deputy governor was a bit clearer than that. I think she gave evidence to the Committee yesterday saying that next year there will be 0.4 to 0.5 percentage points off inflation because of the measures in the Budget.”

“That is not entirely correct. The £16 billion is the result of a productivity downgrade. Because of higher wage inflation and price inflation, there were also higher tax revenues, but higher inflation is not a good thing, because, of course, that erodes the spending power of Government. I would not characterise it as, …”

“Obviously, everything in the next spending review will be set out in the next spending review.”

“Good try. I think the OBR are sticking to their number of around a 4% hit, but it is still very material. That is why we have this reset with the EU and why we are at the moment negotiating around a new food and farming agreement, energy trading, electricity trading, Erasmus and a new youth mobility scheme—because we r…”

“Of course there are always other options available. There are a number of policies leading up to the Budget that we cost. As the Prime Minister has been clear—”