Speculating on next month’s Budget will “put the fear of God” into people, the Prime Minister has said as he declined to rule out further cuts.
In a series of broadcast interviews, Sir Keir Starmer repeatedly said he did not want to “get ahead of the Budget”, due to be revealed on October 30, as he was asked to rule out measures such as scrapping the single person council tax discount and cutting the farming budget.
Asked about the single person council tax discount, which gives people living alone 25% off their council tax bill, he told BBC West: “I am really concerned about this and obviously I’m not going to pre-empt the Budget, but I don’t want to risk putting the fear of God into people.”
Sir Keir added: “I don’t want to get into this, you know, ‘Will you rule out? Will you rule out? Will you rule out?’ because it just puts fear into people and I don’t want to do that.
“What I will say is that I’m very conscious of how hard it’s been for people and we intend to make sure that we have those people who have faced the greatest hardship in our minds’ eyes when we take our decisions.”
Speculation about scrapping the single person discount has followed the Government’s decision to restrict winter fuel payments to only those on pension credit, as Chancellor Rachel Reeves sought to plug what she claimed was a £22 billion black hole in this year’s spending plans.
Ministers have acknowledged further “tough decisions” are on the way at the end of October, but sought to blame the previous Conservative government for leaving a gap in the public finances.
During his round of broadcast interviews as he prepared for the Labour Party Conference, which opens on Sunday, Sir Keir also declined to rule out cutting the farming budget.
But he told ITV West Country: “I can assure farmers that we are listening good and hard to what they said to us before the election and we are absolutely determined that we will deliver on our mandate for change.”
But he did hint that the Budget could include action to “fix” council finances, including by giving local authorities longer-term funding arrangements, as council leaders warned Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner that they faced financial collapse.