TORY claims that Jeremy Corbyn was set to take the country to the “brink of bankruptcy” with a £1.2 trillion spending splurge have been dismissed as a “work of fiction”.
Chancellor Sajid Javid was yesterday forced to defend the dossier put together by his party on Labour’s supposed £650m-a-day economic policies, and distributed to sympathetic newspapers.
The analysis is based partly on the opposition’s 2017 manifesto, and on some more recent announcements.
But while Labour have said they plan to bring down the average working week to 32 hours within a decade, the Tory’s dossier has it starting for all workers on day one of a Corbyn government.
It also assumes a Labour government will immediately abolish private schools, renationalise rail, energy and water, and pilot a universal basic income.
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Speaking on the BBC’s Marr programme, Javid said the figures were the “the true cost of Corbyn’s Labour: these are the numbers that John McDonnell did not want you to see, and they’re out there today.”
He added: “These are eye-watering levels of spending - £1.2 trillion.
“It will be absolutely reckless and will leave this country with an economic crisis within months, not years.”
Last week the Government’s top civil servant intervened to stop the Treasury publishing an assessment of nine Labour policies.
The report was due to be published before Parliament broke up for the election campaign, but Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill was forced to step in after Labour shadow Chancellor John McDonnell protested the “abuse of power”.
Speaking on Sky’s Sophy Ridge show yesterday morning, Business minister Kwasi Kwarteng also defended the £1.2 trillion claim. He said the total had been compiled by “people in [Tory] central office, and also independent analysts”.
“You’re quite right to say that Mark Sedwill blocked the costings from the civil service, and that’s why we’ve got a separate analysis,” Kwarteng said.
Asked about the equivalent total for Tory plans, Kwarteng said only that the party’s commitments “are not anything as astronomical and as huge as the Labour sums”.
Pressed on a specific total, he added: “I’m not going to bandy around figures.”
Ridge replied: “But that’s what you’ve been doing for Labour.”
Labour’s Andrew Gwynne told the BBC that the £1.2 trillion claim was an “absolute work of fiction” by Tories, adding: “You can’t trust a word that Johnson and his ministers say on this issue.
“We will have a fully-costed manifesto in due course when we launch that, and the challenge actually is for the Conservatives to fully cost their own manifesto, something they didn’t do in 2017.”
Asked what the correct figure for Labour’s spending is, the shadow communities secretary said: “Well look, that’s still being finalised.”
Kwarteng also claimed that Johnson was correct to tell businesses in Northern Ireland that they will not have to fill in forms to export goods to the rest of the UK after the Brexit, despite this being in his withdrawal deal.
Kwasi Kwarteng said Johnson was “absolutely on the money”.
Earlier this month Brexit secretary Stephen Barclay told a House of Lords committee that businesses would need to complete “exit summary declarations” for such sending shipments.
Asked if Barclay was wrong, Kwarteng said: “I think you’d have to ask him. But I think that the prime minister knows his deal”.
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