THE cuts to the Winter Fuel Payment is “not going to be the last” announced by the Labour government, the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury has said.
Labour MP James Murray said his party had not wanted to take the decision to cut Winter Fuel Payments for people not claiming benefits, but was forced into it by the economic inheritance they’d been left by the Conservatives.
On Monday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said that Labour had found a £22 billion overspend in the in-year departmental projections, and announced sweeping measures to plug the gap, including the Winter Fuel Payment cuts, cuts to departmental budgets, and cuts to infrastructure projects.
Speaking to GB News, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury Murray suggested further cuts would be coming down the road.
“I want to be really honest with you and say that that decision about the Winter Fuel Payment was a really difficult one,” he said. “It's not one any of us wanted to take. It's not one the Chancellor was expecting to take coming into office.
“But having sound finances, being fiscally responsible, having economic stability, is not an optional extra for us. It's at the heart of what we want to do in government, and that's why we're having to take difficult decisions.
“This is not going to be the last difficult decision we're going to have to take to get the public finances back under control.”
Murray further claimed that the £22bn “black hole” in the public finances had been hidden from the public before the election.
“It's absolutely outrageous that the government let this happen without telling anyone,” he told GB News.
“They covered it up by not being straight with the OBR [Office for Budget Responsibility], not being straight with the British public talking about this in the election campaign.”
The comments come after shadow chancellor Jeremy Hunt wrote to Cabinet Secretary Simon Case – the UK’s most senior civil servant – demanding an “immediate answer” to “conflicting claims” which risk “bringing the civil service into disrepute”.
Hunt said either the spending plans in estimates signed off by senior civil servants while he was in government were incorrect, or the document the Chancellor produced to the Commons on Monday was incorrect.
In a letter to Case, the top Tory said: “After the statement made in the House of Commons today, I am writing to follow up with deep concern over some of the conflicting claims that have been made which risk bringing the civil service into disrepute.
“It is deeply troubling that the Chancellor has today chosen to make claims about the public finances to the House of Commons which directly contradict the documents and legislation the new Government put before Parliament, signed off by senior civil servant accounting officers.”
Hunt asked Case to confirm that senior civil servants signed off on the main estimates and “if the estimates are wrong, will accounting officers be sanctioned for signing off departmental spending plans for this year which are based on a forecast of requirements that are incorrect?”
