Both main parties disagree on the state of the economic outlook for the UK.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00But when I arrived at the Treasury on the very first day,
00:03I was alerted by officials that this was not how much
00:05the previous government expected to spend this year.
00:08It wasn't even close.
00:11In fact, the total pressures on these budgets across a range of areas
00:14was an additional £35 billion.
00:17You don't need to win an election to find out the state of public finances
00:21as we've got the OBR now.
00:23Paul Johnson of the IFS says the state of public finances
00:27were apparent pre-election to anyone who cared to look,
00:32which is why he and other independent figures say
00:34her argument is not credible and won't wash.
00:38There are sort of big issues and of course these issues
00:40were sort of known before the election.
00:42They would have been sort of in possession of sort of information
00:44sort of from the Office of Budget Responsibility
00:46or saying that even the sort of the cuts that were sort of baked in,
00:49which the sort of the Labour Party said that they were going to sort of adhere to,
00:52was going to cause or were going to cause problems.
00:54But they claimed that of course the sort of the problems
00:56were even sort of more embedded and deeper than they previously thought.