Shadow minister suggests Labour would spend wisely rather than highly

Wes Streeting, the shadow child poverty secretary, has suggested that the Labour party would not necessarily spend more if it were in government.

The Labour MP for Ilford North tweeted earlier today:

For anyone who needs to hear this: a budget that hammers working people and leads to more kids being in poverty is not a budget that a Labour Chancellor would ever have put forward.

High spending ≠ Labour.

Labour = fair tax and wise spending leading to socially just outcomes.

— Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) October 28, 2021

This comes just hours after the Office for Budget Responsibility released their analysis of the Treasury’s budget plans, announced by Chancellor Rishi Sunak yesterday afternoon, revealing that the tax burden is scheduled to soar from 33.5% of GDP recorded prior to the pandemic in 2019-20 to 36.2%by 2026-27.

It said this is the highest level of tax since towards the end of Clement Attlee’s Labour administration in the early 1950s, after the UK continued to reel from the effects of the Second World War.