The chief secretary to the Treasury says Rachel Reeves "chose investment over further decline", despite a hostile market response to the chancellor's Budget. Darren Jones adds Conservative ministers have been "dishonest" about the true state of the country's public finances. Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00This budget chose investment over further decline in this country but importantly with really strong
00:04fiscal rules in place. So our stability rule means that for the first time since the last
00:09Labour government we'll be paying for our day-to-day costs in public services, the tax receipts instead
00:14of borrowing each and every month to pay the bills. That is a good thing and our investment
00:18rule means that debt will be falling as a share of the economy ahead of schedule in 2027-28. So
00:24these robust fiscal rules verified by the Independent Office for Budget Responsibility
00:28show that there's confidence in this budget and confidence in our plans. So our commitments in
00:33the manifesto not to increase income tax or national insurance on employees and their pay
00:36slips, not to increase VAT and not to increase corporation tax on business profits is an election
00:42promise not just for this budget but for every single budget between now and the next election.
00:46But because we inherited public finances out of control from the Conservatives we've had to make
00:50those tax decisions, other tax decisions in this budget to get a grip of public finances. But as
00:55the Chancellor has said we don't expect to have to do that again because a lot of the heavy lifting
00:59in this budget was clearing the slate clean from the Conservatives' inheritance that is our
01:04responsibility as the new government to do. What the IFS have also said is that they didn't know
01:09and we didn't know and you didn't know that the Conservatives had completely blown what's called
01:13the reserve, the country's overdraft in the last fiscal year. The Office of Budget Responsibility
01:17confirmed at Budget this week that had Conservative ministers been transparent about that
01:22the information that we would have all had going into the election would have been quote
01:25materially different. So it's wrong to say there was dishonesty about that.
01:29The only people that have been dishonest are Conservative ministers.