Leading questions for the Opposition this week during Treasury question time in the House of Commons, Richard highlighted the failure of the Chancellor to get to grips with welfare spending.
Richard Fuller, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said:
Everyone acknowledges that welfare spending is out of control and will end up bankrupting the country at its current rate of growth.
I appreciate this is a difficult area and I have some sympathies with those in the Labour government trying to make even modest changes but faced with a huge and militant group of backbenchers who will not countenance even the most cursory of reforms.
I believe the Leader of the Opposition was right to offer the support of the Conservative Party to help the government come up with a sensible plan to tackle this developing crisis. A cross party approach is the most likely route to success in this challenging area, and the issue is too important to be bogged down in petty party politics.
From her response to my question, I don't believe the Chancellor is ready to recognise the severity of this problem and nor is she ready to forego her default position of reducing the argument to political point scoring. I fear that she may regret being so dismissive in the months ahead as the welfare bill grows and grows and she remains utterly powerless to do anything about it.
You can see the exchange at https://youtu.be/_g59Qq1xiT4?si=Rx1_UyW67poC0fxI
Richard also raised concerns over UK long term borrowing costs adding:
The Chancellor is embarrassingly out of her depth and every day of her economic mismanagement plunges the country further into chaos.
This week she falsely claimed that the OBR are forecasting that debt will fall during this parliament and furthermore, that this never happened under the Conservatives. This is wrong on whatever measure is used. You can read a full rebuttal from Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride here.
Refusing to answer questions by resorting to cheap, and inaccurate jibes about Liz Trust, shows a distinct lack of seriousness about the enormous damage caused by presiding over such cripplingly high borrowing costs.
You can watch this exchange at https://youtu.be/9I1Py_Cpgdc?si=qKV5NSxiHhtzs7D5
