The Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has accused the Conservatives of “gaslighting” the public over the state of the economy, before economy forecasts come out later this week.
In a speech this morning she conceded that inflation could hit 2%, economy could be out of technical recession and interest rates likely to fall by the time of the election expected in the autumn,
However she siad that the end of a ‘technical recession’ is only a ‘technical recovery’
‘We won’t have turned a corner until working people feel they are better off’
“I love a graph as much as the next person, I spent the early part of my career looking at them obsessively. But in the end, what success looks like is how people feel.”
She said that the Tories had “crashed the car and left it by the side of the road.”
The UK economy she maintained would be £140bn bigger if it had grown at the rate of other OECD economies over the last 14 years.
She criticised the plans by Jeremy Hunt to abolish national insurance saying that might mean 8p in pound income tax rise, a ‘tax bombshell’ for pensioners
She also suggested that she won’t be unfreezing personal tax thresholds if Labour wins the election, despite huge hit of fiscal drag
‘I have made no bones about wanting taxes on working people to be lower… I’m not going to make any unfunded tax cuts or spending commitments’
In a reach out to the business community she said that that businesses have ‘nothing to fear’ from Labour’s new worker’s rights package
Commenting on the speech the Joseph Rowntree foundation said:
She said that a Labour government would consult on how it should be implemented to avoid any ‘adverse consequences’ for businesses
Rachel Reeves was right to say today that economic success is about more than lines on a graph. People’s experience of the economy is just as important.
But the Shadow Chancellor has failed to set out how people on the lowest incomes will see their living standards improve
Adding
“Any plan for a new economy must recognise the scale of the problem and the need to take action. An ambitious economic plan must put tackling hardship at its core.”
