The Government’s claim that the Conservatives left a £20 billion black hole in the public finances is “absolutely ridiculous” according to Shadow Paymaster General John Glen.
The MP for Salisbury and South Wiltshire told GB News: “It is absolutely ridiculous. When we set up the Office of Budget Responsibility – it’s all open, they mirror the Treasury’s figures, every fiscal event, and there’s complete transparency.
“We showed how we balanced the books…we got inflation down to 2% now, we are the fastest growing economy in the first quarter of year, we’d love to have faster growing economies across the G7 but that hasn’t happened.
“There are always pressures. Every fiscal event, every spending department is saying ‘we need a bit more Chancellor’, that we need a bit more here and a bit more there.
“To govern is to take those tough decisions and to put reforms in place to reduce the number of civil servants, the welfare reforms that we set, to get those additional tens of thousands of people back into work.
“It’s by taking those decisions that you manage some of those pressures. And indeed, last year when we had the review of public pay review bodies, we didn’t borrow more or increase taxes, we made departments absorb those additional costs.”
Asked if former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak would still be involved in politics next year, he said: “I very much expect so.
“He took on the leadership in 2022 after he lost it in summer, [but] he never had the support that was required, the unity that was required, despite moving forward with the Windsor Framework, taking number of bold decisions and getting our inflation down to 2%, really doing what was right in difficult political circumstances.
“He’s a man of great integrity. He will do what is required for the party. I’m sure he does feel this defeat personally and has taken responsibility for it.
“I think most people recognise the way he conducted himself demonstrates the man’s great personal qualities.
“He said he’ll stay for the whole of this Parliament. He’s got two young children at school. I can’t predict – I don’t know where I will be in four or five years time. We don’t know what the future holds.
“I very much hope so. He’s got a lot to contribute to national life, I worked closely with him at the Treasury and have a very high regard for him.”
On the Tory leadership hopefuls, he said: “They’ve all made a significant contribution in different ways. I think what the Conservative Party needs to do is come to terms with this historic catastrophic defeat, show a degree of humility and reflection over the summer, and allow our membership to be driving the outcome of this selection process.
“I’m not going to be drawn on who I’d be supporting yet, because I want to see all of them address many dimensions of the challenges we face both as a party but more importantly as a country.
“There are two things here. It is about who’s the most credible figure to be leading us in opposition and who’s going to then actually on the back of that be credible as a future candidate to be Prime Minister.
“We need a lot of scrutiny over the next three or four months. I respect all of them for having the courage to stand and I hope that we’ll have a clean and helpful contest as we lay the foundations for recovery.”
WATCH THE CLIP ABOVE FOR MORE