THE SNP have accused Rishi Sunak of being like “Liz Truss in slow motion” after it was revealed that UK Government borrowing costs have reached a 15-year high.
The interest rate on short-term UK Government borrowing – known as two-year gilt yields – increased by more than 0.2 percentage points on Tuesday.
They now sit at 4.83% - the highest level since the 2008 financial crash.
It also means that yields are higher today than they were in the aftermath of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini budget.
Stewart Hosie, SNP MP and the party’s economy spokesperson at Westminster, said Sunak was continuing Truss’s legacy of economic incompetence.
“The car crash of Tory economic incompetence continues and it is households across the country who are paying the price for Rishi Sunak and the UK Tory government’s complete failure to control interest rates and inflation.
“Instead of turning things around, Rishi Sunak has been Liz Truss in slow motion with government borrowing costs even higher now than when Truss and Kwarteng outlined their disastrous mini-budget in the autumn.
“Responsibility for this mess lies squarely at the door of the Tories and their Brexit obsession, which has caused the UK to be one of the worst performing economies in the G20. There’s no hope of a brighter future under a Labour government either as it will keep Scotland out of the European Union, which has a market seven times the size of the UK’s.
“We can no longer afford to be held back by Westminster control and the economic incompetence of the Tories and the only way we can do that is with independence.”
It comes as the latest employment figures revealed a record number of people in work.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the UK jobless rate fell to 3.8% in the three months to April from 3.9% in the previous quarter.
However, the figures also showed concerning trends with yet another record high for those off work due to sickness and average weekly wages remaining down when inflation is taken into account.
