Rachel Reeves has said she will not let critics “get me down” following a bumpy few days for the UK economy. The chancellor was speaking to the BBC’s Political Thinking with Nick Robinson podcast towards the end of a week which saw the country’s borrowing costs rise to the highest level for several years.
Reeves said the rise was “not a British phenomenon” and that other countries had also seen borrowing costs increase. She also insisted she had “got what it takes to deliver for people in this country” and the ideas to “turn things around”.
On Thursday, figures showed the UK economy grew by 0.1% in November, fuelling concern that growth could remain stagnant for some time to come.
The Conservatives have accused the chancellor of “burying her head in the sand” and called for an “urgent change of course”. The Liberal Democrat’s Treasury spokeswoman Daisy Cooper said Reeves had “put the handbrake on the economy with her misguided jobs tax” – a reference to the rise to the National Insurance paid by businesses.
The rise has drawn criticism from businesses who have warned it could lead to price rises and inevitable job losses. On Friday, the boss of retail giant Next said the tax change could make it “harder for people to enter the workforce”.
Rachel Reeves said she would be meeting regulators to encourage them to “do what is needed” to boost growth. “We are not going to be able to grow the economy if the regulators keep doing what they’re doing,” she said.
She added that there was not “a room big enough” to meet all the UK’s regulators. Since coming to power in July, Reeves has faced criticism for several of her decisions including removing the winter fuel payment from all but the poorest pensioners, changing inheritance tax rules for farmers and opting not to compensate women affected by changes to the state pension age.
She defended those moves as “difficult decisions” that were “the right decisions in the national interest”. She added that she wished she had arrived in the job and been told “‘the money’s coming in’… then I could have made different decisions”.
Asked if her decisions had damaged business confidence, Reeves asked: “What was the alternative? Imagine that I hadn’t addressed that problem and now when financial markets look at the UK, they would be saying ‘this is a government that is not real about the situation that it faces, it is spending more money than it is bringing in. It’s having to borrow more and more’.”
You can listen to the Political Thinking with Nick Robinson interview with Rachel Reeves on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday at 17:30 GMT or on BBC Sounds.
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