Read the full speech below:
“We need to live within our means.
John Healey is not Rachel Reeves,
And many people see that as an improvement.
How could anyone do worse than £70 billion in new tax rises across just two Budgets?
However, I think that next week, John Healey will deliver a Budget that does just as much damage to our country as Rachel Reeves did. In fact, it could be even worse.
We are being told that next week he will deliver a ‘nothing to see here’ Budget.
That is code in Whitehall for a Budget which tries to do as little as possible in the hope that no one notices.
Picture the Chancellor burying his head in the sand and hoping to deliver a Budget so inconsequential, that it ‘does no harm’ as some Labour MPs have been asking.
But the problem is that Britain cannot afford to do as little as possible.
That is not good enough.
Problems have caught up with us that we can no longer afford to run away from.
First and foremost, Britain’s national debt is higher now than at any point since the 1960s.
And it is going up and up every year.
We must live within our means.
Last week the IMF praised the government for their plans to reduce Britain’s deficit.
The IMF clearly don’t know this Labour Party like I do,
Because they are not going to reduce the deficit.
To meet their fiscal rules, Labour’s deficit reduction plans depend on them making huge cuts to the public sector in 2029.
I think there will be an election before then and we will have to clean up their mess again.
We are not fooled by made-up spending cuts and neither, it would seem, are the IFS.
The IFS say that simply pencilling in implicit cuts that they have no intention of delivering would make the Budget a work of fiction.
Labour have increased spending by more than £100 billion in just two-and-a-bit years.
They are not suddenly going to find the courage to cut spending in the final year of a Parliament right before an election.
Fictional cuts, pardon the pun please, are not going to cut it.
Investors aren’t buying these fictional cuts either.
We know this because Britain’s 30-year gilt yields went above 6 per cent this month. That is their highest level since 1998.
That means that when we borrow a pound for twelve years it ends up costing us two pounds.
It is true the wars in Ukraine and Iran are pushing these rates up around the world.
That is no more Labour’s fault than it was ours when the war in Ukraine started.
However, the UK is now paying more to borrow than any other advanced economy.
We are paying over 1 per cent more than Greece and Spain.
We are paying nearly 2 per cent more than Germany.
If Britain paid 2 per cent less interest on our national debt, we would save nearly £20 billion a year by 2030.
That is double what we need to get to 3 per cent on defence.
The entire argument on defence spending would go away if our interest rates came down.
That is why we need to live within our means.
We have to stop borrowing so much, but instead, Labour are taking out more loans to pay the interest on our existing loans.
Any family or business in that position would know that they were sinking, that every attempt to borrow their way out was pulling them deeper.
The right way is to bring down spending.
That’s why the Conservative Party has found more than £70 billion in savings.
Savings the Government could start making today.
Under our Golden Economic Rule half of those savings would go to reducing the deficit,
Because Conservatives believe in handing a stronger economy to the next generation and that means less debt.
Cuts are never easy, but they are much easier to accept if what you are doing is fair.
Fair to taxpayers, fair to future generations and fair to those who really do need support.
We are the only party in Britain with a plan to reduce the deficit.
I have said it before and I will say it again and again, until I am blue in the face:
Britain’s national security is under threat.
We need to cut welfare to fund defence.
Cutting welfare to fund defence is our next challenge.
Andy Burnham might think that national security can’t come at the expense of social security.
But John Healey resigned as Defence Secretary because he could not, in good conscience, preside over a funding settlement of less than 3 per cent of GDP.
I remember him writing that not meeting that commitment would put our troops at risk.
If, at this Budget, he does not find the money to get to 3 per cent, John Healey has an awful lot of explaining to do.
But we are hearing that the decision has been kicked into the Spending Review and the Spending Review itself has been kicked into next autumn.
If this is true, this is unconscionable.
Britain is at risk, John Healey said so himself and no amount of political difficulty should prevent us from responding to that risk.
Let me spell out what that means.
What we are asking for to get to 3 per cent of GDP costs less than a third of the increase in welfare since Labour came to office. I will say that again. What we are asking for is less than a third of the increase to welfare since Labour came to office.
That’s all we’re asking for.
That’s what they say they can’t do.
Andy Burnham wrote in the Times yesterday about the moral outrage of the current benefits system.
But as far as I could work out his answer is to spend even more on benefits.
At a time when Britain can’t fund its defence and we are paying hundreds of thousands of young people with anxiety and ADHD to sit at home on benefits, Labour don’t have the courage to save a single penny.
I will say to the Prime Minister that not fixing a system that you know is broken is the bigger moral outrage.
Next week’s Budget will be Labour’s third since the General Election.
At the first they put up taxes by £40 billion.
At the second they put up taxes again by £26 billion.
What has happened since then?
Unemployment has skyrocketed.
350,000 more people are unemployed due to Labour’s choices.
Graduates are finding it harder than ever to get a job and vacancies are at their lowest level in twelve years because Labour brought in a Jobs Tax.
Living within our means does not mean raising taxes, it means cutting spending.
All raising taxes does is kill growth, businesses close, people lose their jobs and the country gets poorer.
The way to grow our economy is not to spend more taxpayers’ money, it is by giving taxpayers their money back.
We need to get out of the way of the job creators who make our country richer.
We need to encourage risk-taking, wealth creation, enterprise.
Britain’s tax burden has never been higher.
You are taxed on the heating in your home.
You’re taxed at the petrol pump, filling up your car.
You’re taxed when you insure that car.
You’re taxed if you take the family away on holiday.
You’re taxed if you stay in the UK thanks to Andy Burnham’s Tourist Tax.
Taxed to buy a home, taxed to live in a home, taxed to pass on your home.
This is clearly not working. Britain does not feel better off.
Tax, tax, tax, tax, tax, tax.
Labour keeps dreaming up new taxes because as the Welfare Secretary said every meeting he has with Labour MPs is them asking who can they tax to pay more benefits.
So, what are Labour planning to do at the Budget?
Put taxes up again.
They think no one will notice if they take a little bit here from banks, a little bit there from landlords.
They do not understand how the economy works.
Taxing banks may seem harmless to Labour MPs. I’m sure they’d even enjoy it.
But here’s what it will mean.
Higher mortgage rates when you buy your home.
Higher interest rates for businesses taking out a loan.
It will mean fewer jobs, not just jobs in banking. Fewer jobs across the country from all those businesses which sack people or which never start up in the first place.
Labour think they’re punishing the banks’ shareholders.
Who do they think the shareholders are?
It’s our pension funds, the retirement savings of millions of people.
You cannot tax your way to prosperity. It has never worked before.
That is why our plan is to cut people’s taxes and get Britain working again.
Cutting taxes to get Britain working again means:
Cut National Insurance for under-25s,
Cut Business Rates for the High Street,
Scrap the Grocery Tax,
Scrap the Family Farms Tax,
Scrap Stamp Duty and scrap Inheritance Tax on your home. That is what we can do.
This is what you can do if you have the courage to make difficult decisions.
That is what a Conservative government would do.
Andy Burnham likes to talk about hope.
Hope is not something you will into existence.
It is a feeling people have when they can see a route to a better future.
When their standard of living is improving and opportunities are out there.
Hope is infectious. It rubs off on people when they can see others around them building better lives.
That is how you create hope and we can do it.
Cut spending.
Cut the deficit.
Fund our defence.
Cut people’s taxes.
That is the Budget John Healey should deliver next week.
A nothing to see here Budget would in fact be something to see.
We’d be seeing a Labour Party two and a half years into government already out of ideas and running scared from the tough decisions facing this country.
It’s very easy to announce that you don’t like people making noise on trains. That is a job for ticket inspectors, not the Prime Minister.
If Labour’s plan is to kick tough decisions into the long grass, come out with tiny bits of micro-policy, put up a few taxes, spend a bit more on welfare, and hope nobody notices before the next election, they are kidding themselves.
I can see what they’re doing.
The country can see what they’re doing.
So, I say to the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, it is time to take the difficult decisions and put this country first.”
Robert Jenrick on the Today programme:
“Can you now give a guarantee to your listeners this morning that no BBC presenter in the future will be exposed as a paedophile, as a number have been in the recent past? No, of course you can’t…”