In the first edition of Kemi and Keir’s weekly clashes following last week’s Budget, the changes announced by Reeves last week remained the hot topic of debate between the Tory and Labour leaders.
Kicking of PMQs today [3rd December], Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced government plans to reduce the cost of infant formula, in plans that Starmer said will save new parents up to £500 “before their child’s first birthday.”
Starmer linked this to the government’s wider efforts to tackle the cost of living crisis for families, with other actions such as cutting energy bills by £150 per family and introducing breakfast clubs for primary school children.
The Budget looms large
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch used her allocated questions today to hit out at a Budget that she has repeatedly labelled as the “Budget for “Benefits Street””.
Badenoch used the recent resignation of Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) chief Richard Hughes to urge the Prime Minister to resign, saying: “Does the Prime Minister believe that when an organisation descends into total shambles, the person at the top should resign?”
“The Prime Minister does not want to answer a question about taking responsibility, because he likes to blame everyone except himself, and so does the Chancellor.”
Hughes resigned on Monday [1st December] following an investigation into how the OBR leaked the Budget in its entirety about an hour before Reeves’ Commons announcement last week. Hughes has taken full responsibility for the error, which revealed Reeves plans in the minutes before she was due to speak to the Commons.
Badenoch was also particularly critical of pre-Budget briefings by Chancellor Rachel Reeves, in which Reeves seemed to indicate that she was planning to raise income tax: “If she were a CEO, she would have been fired, and she might even have been prosecuted for market abuse.”
“We know that there were endless Treasury briefings to justify raising taxes on hard-working people to pay for benefits and those briefings had real-world consequences.”
Starmer hit back at this, bringing back Labour’s favourite Conservative-bashing statistic from last year, the “£22 billion black hole.”
“Picking up a £16 billion tab for the Conservatives’ failure is not a good starting point for any Budget.”
He also defended his Chancellor, saying: “The OBR said yesterday that the Chancellor’s speech was not misleading, so if the Leader of the Opposition had any decency, she would get up now and apologise.”
Badenoch also criticised Starmer’s U-turn on the two-child benefit cap. While Labour lifted the cap in the Budget last week, in July 2024 seven Labour MPs had the party whip removed for voting for an SNP motion to scrap the cap.
In making the U-turn, Badenoch accused Starmer of cowing to his backbenchers: “He cannot run his own party, let alone the country.”
In response, Starmer affirmed the government’s mission to tackle child poverty: “We are taking half a million children out of poverty, and we are very proud to do so.”
“We are building a brighter future.”
The Kent water crisis
Continuing water shortages in and around Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent were the subject of Lib Dem leader Ed Davey’s first question today.
Thousands of residents have been out of water for five days, which Davey labelled a “public health emergency.”
He called on the Prime Minister to “convene Cobra”, which Starmer, while sympathetic to the issues, did not explicitly commit to.
In response to this, Davey said: “The Government will need to do more, because South East Water has failed so badly.”
Trials without jury
Another controversial government proposal, Tory MP Paul Holmes hit out against the government’s much-criticised plans to scrap trials with jury in some cases in an effort to speed up prosecutions across England and Wales.
There are currently 78,000 cases waiting to be heard in Crown Courts in England and Wales – it is this extreme backlog has led the government to propose these drastic changes.
Starmer responded by accusing the Conservatives of leaving behind a “broken criminal justice system.”
He said: “We are making sensible changes to ensure that victims get justice, which was denied to them under the failure left by the Conservatives.”
Final thought
The continued focus on the Budget this week reflects just how controversial it has been in Westminster – there’s little chance that Badenoch or the Tories will end their attack on Reeves’ measures any time soon.
Featured image via House of Commons.
