Rachel Reeves, Britain's new finance minister, is set to accuse the former Conservative government of committing to billions of pounds of spending without proper
budgeting. This accusation will be formally presented to parliament on Monday.
Labour, having won a landslide victory on July 4 to lead the world's sixth-largest economy, has spent the first three weeks in power revealing that the state of public policy is worse than anticipated. Upon taking office, Reeves ordered a new assessment of public funding needs, which will form the basis of her upcoming budget statement later this year.
Labour Party sources indicated on Friday that the assessment uncovered a shortfall of around £20 billion ($26 billion). On Saturday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer's office stated that this assessment would reveal that "Britain is broke and broken."
Late Sunday, the finance ministry confirmed that the audit would show the previous government had overspent this year's budget by billions due to unfunded commitments. Reeves will also introduce a new Office of Value for Money, initiatives to reduce government waste, less reliance on external consultants, and a sell-off of unused government property.
In her upcoming parliamentary speech, Reeves is expected to state, "The previous government refused to take the difficult decisions. They covered up the true state of the public finances. And then they ran away."
The Conservative Party has dismissed these claims, suggesting Labour is using them as a pretext to raise taxes. During the election campaign, Labour pledged not to increase income tax, value-added tax, or other main taxes.
Despite the March budget forecasts being approved by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, funding issues in sectors such as prisons and healthcare were widely reported. Gareth Davies, a Conservative lawmaker responsible for budget policy, accused Reeves of trying to deceive the public into accepting Labour's tax increases, saying, "Rachel Reeves is trying to con the British public into accepting Labour's tax rises. She wants to pretend that the OBR ... whose forecasting was used in all of the last Conservative government's budgets, doesn't exist." Photo by Lauren Hurley / No 10 Downing Street, Wikimedia commons.