Susanna Reid left Rachel Reeves looking flustered this morning after grilling her about whether she broke Labour‘s manifesto commitments in the Budget.
The Good Morning Britain presenter piled pressure on the Chancellor during an awkward encounter as she appeared on the ITV breakfast show a day after unveiling a £30billion assault on British workers.
Ms Reeves unveiled a series of smaller money grabbing tax increases in a desperate bid to balance the books, having abandoned plans for a manifesto-busting income tax rise earlier this month.
These include a new pay-per-mile tax for electric vehicles, increased taxes on online betting and a so-called ‘mansion tax’ on homes worth more than £2million.
But she continued to face accusations of breaching Labour’s election promise not to raise taxes on ‘working people’ after introducing a £13billion freeze on income tax for three years.
During a heated exchange with Ms Reid, the Labour MP repeatedly denied breaching the manifesto pledge and insisted the document only committed to not changing tax ‘rates’.
But the presenter refused to let the floundering Chancellor off the hook, asking her: ‘How can anyone believe anything you say?’
‘I am Chancellor in the world as it is and not in the world as I might like it to be,’ Ms Reeves replied, before repeating the ways in which the Government was easing costs on taxpayers.
Susanna Reid (left) had Rachel Reeves (right) looking flustered this morning after grilling her about whether she broke Labour’s manifesto commitments in the Budget
In an interview on Good Morning Britain, the Chancellor wriggled on whether the package broke Labour ‘s manifesto, claiming that document only committed to not changing tax ‘rates’
The Chancellor continued: ‘I am not pretending what I did yesterday is not asking working people to contribute more, but because of other changes we have made around gambling taxes, around higher value properties, means that I was able to keep that to an absolute minimum.
Ms Reid then responds saying: ‘But you acknowledge that when you make a promise, when you make in a promise in the manifesto, when you make a promise in the Commons publicly, we can’t believe those promises because they could be broken.’
The Chancellor squirms once more as she reiterates: ‘In the manifesto it is very clear that it was rates of income tax, National Insurance and VAT.’
But, an unrelenting Ms Reid cut her off and insisted she was lying: ‘That’s not true. In the manifesto it said and I quote “Labour will not increase taxes on working people”. ‘
Ms Reeves then jumped in to defend herself, saying: ‘But Susanna if you then carry on reading the next sentence says the rates. But I do recognise that we have asked from 2028 for people to contribute more by freezing those thresholds for further three years.’
While Ms Reeves has tried to justify the move with the introduction of smaller tax reliefs and money off energy bills, members of the public fear they will struggle to make ends meet.
‘Middle aged single parent. Worked hard, earn higher rate tax salary. Never benefitted from child benefit due to salary. Striving to pay into pension to secure a good retirement. now paying for other people’s children, NI benefits removed from my pension – where is the help?,’ one person wrote on X.
Another added: ‘Well all I heard was stutters and stumbling, I’m a single father and yesterday’s budget to me has made it harder to spend time with my son as I have to work longer to keep the lights on at home, this budget to me myself feels it’s like I have a bully stood on my neck taking money.’
Others praised Reid for her staunch interviewing technique, with one person writing: ‘Thank you @susannareid100 for saying what the majority of the country are thinking and would like to say to the chancellor!
The huge raid unveiled yesterday includes an eye-watering £12.7billion from extending the hated tax threshold freeze for another three years.
Around a quarter of the working population will be paying higher or top rate tax by then, up from just 15 per cent when it was imposed in 2021.
The higher rate threshold would have been £70,370 by 2030 instead of £50,270 if it had risen in line with inflation.
The tax burden is due to reach a new peak as a proportion of GDP in records that go back more than 300 years.
The Office for Budget Responsibility said economic growth under Labour would be even lower than forecast last year – and warned that none of the 88 measures unveiled by Ms Reeves would have a ‘material impact’ on boosting GDP.
The decision to spend £3billion a year axing the two-child cap was cheered wildly by Labour MPs.
But it will involve the taxpayer funding handouts worth thousands of pounds a year each to Britain’s biggest jobless families.
The OBR on Wednesday night warned that the largesse would result in a further 25,000 big families claiming benefits, at an estimated cost of £300million.
Ms Reeves is seen in the Commons as she unveiled a series of smaller money grabbing tax increases in a desperate bid to balance the books
Overall welfare spending is forecast to be £16billion higher by 2030-31 than the watchdog thought as recently as March.
Alarmingly, annual spending on welfare per year is forecast to rise from £333billion in 2025-26 to £389.4billion in 2029-30.
The Tories condemned it as a ‘Budget for benefits street’ while Nigel Farage hit out at an ‘assault on aspiration’.
However, the measures have been welcomed by Labour MPs with ministers suggesting Ms Reeves has ‘saved her skin’.
In a round of interviews this morning, the Chancellor told GB News: ‘I did have to increase taxes yesterday, but I’ve kept them to an absolute minimum on ordinary working people, freezing those thresholds for an additional three years from 2028.’
Ms Reeves added: ‘This Government are backing aspiration.’
The Chancellor told Sky News that Labour was ‘very specific in the manifesto that we wouldn’t increase the rates of income tax, national insurance or VAT’.
She added: ‘But I do recognise yesterday that I have asked working people to contribute a bit more by freezing those thresholds from 2028.
