Treasury chief secretary and Newsnight’s Victoria Derbyshire in heated Budget tax hike clash

Treasury chief secretary and Newsnight's Victoria Derbyshire in heated Budget tax hike clashBBC Newsnight

Transcript

00:00You have to give an honest assessment of how much it costs to run the country or you continue

00:07down the path the Tories took by not being honest with people about that.

00:12So you had to raise taxes today to clear the slate clean from the Conservatives and to

00:16build from that.

00:17Now you could have done something like putting back national insurance that the Tories cut

00:22for the election in an unaffordable way, but we made a promise to the British people not

00:26to do that.

00:27So we were not going to do that and we didn't do that.

00:29That does mean, as a consequence, there are other difficult decisions in tax and those

00:32are the ones that we've set out today.

00:33I just want you to be honest about the trade-off and it is that there will be fewer people

00:37in work.

00:38Let me be very clear.

00:39I will always answer your questions honestly and I will not take any suggestion that I'm

00:42being dishonest in my answers.

00:44I'm telling you what the trade-off is.

00:45The trade-off was between breaking a manifesto commitment and raising national insurance

00:49on working people or making difficult tax decisions in other places.

00:54That is the trade-off that we took because we honoured our election promises to the British

00:57people.

00:59I can hear you.

01:00I'm asking you to accept what the OBR wrote today, which is your national insurance tax

01:04rises will mean fewer people are in work.

01:06You accept that?

01:07I accept everything in the OBR report because we respect the independence of the OBR.

01:12What I'm telling you is that you have to make these difficult trade-offs and that's what

01:15I'm explaining and answering your question.

01:16Well, I still don't think I've had an answer to the question.

01:21How is pushing people out of work pro-growth?

01:25If you don't make the tax decisions to get public finances back onto a sustainable path,

01:31you end up in a situation like we did under the Conservatives, where you've got extra

01:35borrowing, you've got public services on their knees, you've got inflation going through

01:38the roof.

01:39That is not good for the economy, it's not good for working people and it is not good

01:42for business.

01:43This budget resets the British economy and builds for the future and I think that is

01:48good news for everybody.

01:49You hope.

01:50You don't know that yet.