Rachel Reeves’s CV “has as many holes as the Budget”, Shadow Secretary Victoria Atkins has claimed during a fiery GB News rant.
The Chancellor is under increasing pressure over claims she embellished her CV.
Reeves’s 2021 claim in an interview with Stylist magazine that she had spent a decade at the Bank of England has been challenged because her LinkedIn account described it as a six-year period between 2000 and 2006.
Speaking on GB News, Atkins let rip at the Chancellor who is already being intensely scrutinised over some of the measures she unveiled in her October Budget.
Victoria Atkins lamented Reeves’s ‘shocking’ start
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“Her CV – there are as many questions about it as there are about the Treasury figures underlying this Budget”, she said.
“What a shocking first few months this Government has had. We had the pants scandal where they had other people paying for their clothes.
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Victoria Atkins joined Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster on GB News
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“We had Taylor Swift freebies and now it seems we have questions about the Chancellor’s CV.”
No 10 has defended Reeves’s record in office when asked whether she had exaggerated her CV.
“The Prime Minister is very clear that the Chancellor has restored financial stability,” a spokeswoman said.
She added: “This is someone who on coming into office looked under the bonnet and exposed a £22 billion black hole in the public finances, and has been straight with the public about what is necessary to balance the books and restore financial stability in the face of that.”
Rachel Reeves has been accused of embellishing her CVGB News Pressed about Sir Keir Starmer’s thoughts on the reports, the No 10 spokeswoman added: “He is very clear that this is a Chancellor that has been straight with the public about the state of the public finances and what is necessary to restore financial stability. That is most important.”
Reeves’s LinkedIn profile says she worked in three areas of the Bank over the six-year period she was employed there – its international economic analysis division, then at the British Embassy in Washington DC in the second secretary economic division, and finally in the structural economic analysis division.
It then lists her time working for Halifax Bank of Scotland, then her political career following her election in 2010.
The row over Reeves’s work history emerged as ministers face anger from farmers about inheritance tax reforms which the Chancellor announced in the Budget.
Thousands of farmers are expected in London today seeking to force the Government’s hand.