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Lord Livermore (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 12 February 2025

Debate

Economic Growth: Public Spending

Contribution

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question, but his contention seems to be that we were wrong to be honest about the challenges in the public finances, and should instead have maintained the previous Government’s cover-up. He seems to be saying that we were wrong to deal with those challenges, and should instead have maintained the £22 billion black hole in the public finances. Let me be clear: those are exactly the two ingredients—hiding from scrutiny and hiding from reality—at the heart of the Liz Truss mini-Budget, and we saw how that ended. If that is the noble Lord’s recommendation, I fundamentally disagree with him. We were right to restore honesty and transparency to the public finances, and we were right to repair them, which is why we took the difficult decisions that we did.

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