This morning John Healey was asked if there will be welfare cuts before the election. He said:
“There will be, there will be a reduction in the benefits bill, we’ll do that in a Labour way and we will do that because it is simply not good for Britain or progressive to have a bigger and bigger benefits bill and I feel a moral, a moral duty to deal with these youngsters who at the moment have been written off by previous governments and I’m not prepared to see that happen in the future.”
Treasury spinners then claimed to say that was a pledge to bring the bill down “was an over-interpretation of the exchange and it was overly prominent” to say Healey was promising to do this before the election. They added “had he wanted to say that, he would have said it in the Budget statement itself“. A rollback repeated by the No10 spokesman at lunchtime…
The Chancellor has now told Krishnan Guru-Murthy: “it’s not correct to say that we’re going to bring this welfare bill down in this Parliament.” The Treasury says the bill will come down in 2030/31. This is a big old U-turn…
Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked John Healey: “Just finally, I mean Andy Burnham has been very clear he wants Britain back in the European Union in his lifetime. Do you?”
The Chancellor replied: “I’m older than Andy Burnham. I don’t expect to see that.”