The shadow chief secretary to the Treasury says Rachel Reeves "looks out of her depth" and senses she is "having to backtrack and look for savings" ahead of tomorrow's Spring budget. Richard Fuller adds, "I don't get the impression she's coming into this Spring statement confident knowing this is where she planned to be at". 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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00:00The key issue is how businesses are feeling, the people that we rely on to make the decisions
00:04that can help grow the economy.
00:06And they're hurting.
00:07They're hurting from the decisions that Rachel Reeves made in her budget last October, particularly
00:12raising national insurance, which has meant the businesses planning for this year have
00:16said we probably can't make those additional investments that we want to do to grow our
00:20business.
00:21We're going to have to look at paying lower pay rises because of the tax, and we're probably
00:25going to have to hire fewer people.
00:26So that's where the real, where the rubber hits the road, really, with Rachel Reeves'
00:32budget.
00:33We'd have made different choices last October.
00:36We wouldn't have put forward the tax and spend and borrow policies that Ms. Reeves has.
00:41And that's because conservatives believe that if you want to achieve growth in the economy,
00:44the best way to do that is to tap into the talents of everyone in the country who wants
00:49to take a risk, start a business, or wants to grow a business.
00:53It's all of those people making those decisions that makes for an effective economy.
00:57And that's essentially the message that the governor of the Bank of England was reasserting
01:00yesterday as well.
01:01To me, it looks like the Chancellor is out of her depth, that she didn't anticipate what
01:07a damaging effect her decisions last October would have in confidence amongst British businesses
01:12and the impact that's going to have on near-term growth.
01:16And therefore, she's scrabbling to look at where cuts can be made.
01:19I don't get the impression that she's coming into this spring statement, emergency budget,
01:25whatever you want to call it, confident in knowing that this is what she plans to be
01:29at at this stage.
01:31And so therefore, she's having to backtrack, look for savings, and she's finding as she
01:35takes those back steps, she's walking into her own Labour Party, who thought they were
01:39being elected on a different programme than the one she's now being forced to present to them.