𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Sir Keir Starmer insisted Rachel Reeves did not mislead the public over the state of the public finances ahead of the Budget.

The Prime Minister was asked after his speech whether the Chancellor failed to offer “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”.

He said: “On the build up to the Budget, let me just step through that in some detail. Because there was an OBR productivity review. The result of that was there was £16bn less than we might have otherwise had. That’s a difficult starting point for any Budget.

“We had already made commitments that I think I’d expressed to you and many others, many times over, that we were going to protect our public services particularly the NHS, to cut borrowing costs, and to bear down on the cost of living … We had clear commitments that we’d made throughout the process as to what it was that we were going to achieve.

“Therefore against that backdrop it was inevitable that we would always have to raise revenue, so there’s no misleading there. During the overall process the numbers improved and there was a point at which we thought myself included that we might have to raise for a manifesto breach of some significance. I didn’t want to get to that place but I recognised I might have to.

“And as the process then continued it then became clear to me and others that we might be able to do what we needed to do with our priorities without our manifesto breach and that’s what we did with the fair and necessary decisions that we took … which did make good on the principles.