• 4 hours ago
The chancellor has defended her Autumn Budget, calling it a "robust fiscal framework" that delivers "stability", despite an adverse market reaction that included a jump in the cost of government borrowing. Rachel Reeves adds that the International Monetary Fund has given her Budget "a clean bill of health". Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Transcript
00:00Economic and fiscal stability are the number one priorities for this
00:04government and that's what we achieved in the budget on Wednesday. A robust set
00:09of fiscal rules within a framework which gets debt down as our share of the
00:15economy but crucially within three years something the previous government never
00:20achieved we will not be borrowing at all for day-to-day spending. That's crucial
00:25for fiscal stability and combined with that we've now set the spending on
00:29envelope for the rest of this Parliament so we're not going to need to
00:33come back to find more money we've made those settlements we've agreed the
00:38framework for public spending for the rest of this Parliament. Well what is a
00:41sign of confidence and is that the International Monetary Fund has said on
00:46Wednesday evening that this budget secures fiscal stability whilst also
00:52starting to turn around the lacklustre growth performance of the UK economy so
00:57we've got a clean bill of health from the International Monetary Fund and the
01:01Office of Budget Responsibility the independent UK forecaster says that we
01:06will meet our fiscal rules with headroom two years early so this is a robust
01:10fiscal framework that delivers the economic and fiscal stability that our
01:15country desperately needs after the chaos and instability under the last
01:20government. Look I won't comment on market moves because markets move all
01:24the time but what I am confirming is that the International Monetary Fund has
01:29given our budget a clean bill of health and the Office of Budget Responsibility
01:32have confirmed that we meet our fiscal rules two years early. That should give
01:37confidence to investors that we have that plan to secure our public finances
01:43after the instability and chaos of the last few years.

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