The UK Government was “digging its own black hole” before the Budget, the SNP’s Westminster leader has said.
Pressure continues on Chancellor Rachel Reeves over whether the Treasury misleadingly briefed journalists ahead of last week’s statement, painting a bleaker fiscal picture than was actually the case.
The Prime Minister has backed his Chancellor following calls from opposition politicians for her to resign.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland on Tuesday, the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn accused the Prime Minister of “doubling down at this point on misleading” the public and Parliament.
“What he said there was that productivity has gone down, but the forecast was it had gone down by £16 billion, of course it has, but what he’s importantly not said there is that there was a £32 billion upgrade elsewhere, which meant that the Government wasn’t in the perilous financial situation that it said it was,” he added.
“It looks a lot like the Government was digging its own black hole in this regard and it’s now stuck in it.”
He added: “The Government spent weeks and weeks telling us all the picture was absolutely bleak and there was going to have to be enormous changes in the public finances as a result.
“Now, as it’s transpired, that’s simply not the case. I don’t think it’s good enough for a Government that said they were going to represent change, that said they were going to restore trust in politics and, importantly, to tread lightly on people’s lives.”
If there is not accountability for the Prime Minister and Chancellor, Mr Flynn asked, “then who can there be accountability for?”.
The Labour Party manifesto in last year’s election pledged not to increase taxes “on working people” but the Government has been criticised for freezing tax bands, leaving more people paying more in tax as wages grow.
But Mr Flynn said it was acceptable to breach manifesto promises “if circumstances change”.
“Whether that’s the situation in relation to Ukraine and Russia, whether that’s a global pandemic, whether that’s a downgrade in the public finances,” he said.
“Chancellors and finance secretaries, they all have a responsibility to make sure the public finances are in sound health, but that’s not what we’re talking about today.
“What we’re talking about today is the fact that the Chancellor, in advance of the Budget, said one thing to all of us when another thing was true and the Prime Minister doubled down on that just yesterday by saying ‘I had a productivity downgrade of £16 billion’, when we can all see the graphs that say there was a £32 billion upgrade elsewhere.
“He had more money than he was letting on and yet they still chose to push this narrative privately to journalists, to the public.”
