Rachel Reeves promises she will NOT raise taxes in Spring Statement as she doubles down on cutting UK’s benefits bill

RACHEL Reeves today promises not to raise taxes in the Spring Statement and to balance the books by cracking down on Britain’s bloated state instead.

The Chancellor will also train up to 60,000 brickies, sparkies and engineers to unleash a housing building boom as tells Britain’s youngsters – you’re hired!

Ms Reeves is scrambling to make her sums add up as official economic growth forecasts for 2025 are set to be slashed in half this week.

Lefty pundits and Labour rebels have urged her to whack up levies or go on a borrowing binge to plug the shortfall.

But speaking exclusively to The Sun on Sunday, Ms Reeves promised not to balance the books on the backs of workers with new tax rises.

“This is not a Budget. We’re not going to be doing tax raising”, Ms Reeves said.

Contrasting it with the October Budget which hiked taxes by £40 billion, she added: “We did have to put up some taxes on businesses and the wealthiest in the country in the Budget.

“We will not be doing that in the Spring Statement next week.”

Ms Reeves also insisted her “fiscal rules are non negotiable” – effectively ruling out borrowing billions more to pay for public services.

Instead, Cabinet ministers have been ordered to trawl through every penny their departments spend to find billions in cuts.

Government insiders in departments under the cosh say they are “being cut to the bone” and struggling to find the deep savings demanded of them.

Ms Reeves said: “I know these are tough choices, but not making them would be a dereliction of duty.

“We know what happens when you duck the difficult decisions because we saw it under the last government.

“Instability and higher costs which hit working people’s pockets the hardest.”

In a wide-ranging interview at Bury College just days before her hotly-anticipated Spring Statement, Ms Reeves doubled down on her plans to crack the whip on public spending

Britain’s bulging benefits bill is “morally indefensible and economically damaging”, she said.

Plans to cut £5 billion from sickness benefits is the right thing to do as it will get Brits back to work and save taxpayers cash, she said.

Ms Reeves said: “I’m not happy with a bill that’s just rising and rising.
“I’m absolutely determined to be the Chancellor that gives the support to people to get them back into work, and contributing.”

As part of this back to work drive, the government is today announcing plans to train up to 60,000 more engineers, brickies, sparkies and carpenters by 2029.

It will be paid for with £600 million over the next four years.

Ministers say this new army of workers will help build 1.5 million new homes promised and get Britain’s flatlining growth off life support.

Ms Reeves – who rolled her sleeves up to join young apprentices learning bricklaying in Bury College – said: “I want young people earning or learning, not put on the scrap heap which is what happened under the last government.”

“If you get skills in construction, you’re never going to be out of work, and you’re going to be paid well.”

In a shock move last week, Labour parked their tanks on traditional Tory lawns by vowing to curb the bloated state and abolish quangos – starting with NHS England.

Ms Reeves suggested this is just the beginning and other quangos face being bulleted.

I want young people earning or learning, not put on the scrap heap which is what happened under the last government

Rachel Reeves

“We’ve abolished the biggest quango in the world, NHS England…we’ve just got rid of the payment systems regulator, and got rid of the Community Interest Company regulator.

“And the last government, they talked about deregulation and reducing the size of the state, but didn’t do anything.

“The Conservatives were all talk no trousers.”

Asked if Labour is now the party of the small state, Ms Reeves replied: “We want an efficient state.”

She also defended slashing the foreign aid budget to bankroll higher defence spending.

British taxpayers’ cash will no longer go on barmy projects like funding shrimp farms in Bangladesh, she added.

‘Not wasted’

“We are cutting our spending on national development, and Jenny Chapman – who is the minister responsible – is going to make sure that when that money is spent it does good and it’s not wasted”, Ms Reeves said.

But ministers are under pressure to go further in rolling back the state to help turbocharge the economy.

Earlier this week, The Sun revealed a leaked government report revealing the rush to Net Zero could tank the economy and hit poorer families hardest.

Ms Reeves played down the report – saying she did not “believe the cost”.

But she admitted she is worried about the cost of going green on the wallets of hard-working Brits.

Plans to fine car makers who fail to sell enough electric vehicles are being reviewed “because we want to get the balance right”, the Chancellor said.

“I recognise that people have gone through a massive cost of living crisis, and they don’t want to be paying more in their bills or in the shops.”

In a slap down to Ed Miliband, she also confirmed that drilling at Rosebank oil field and Jackdaw gas field will go ahead – despite a legal challenge against them.

She said: “We said in our manifesto that they would go ahead, that we would honour existing licenses, and we’re committed to doing that, and go ahead they will.

“North Sea oil and gas is going to be really important to the UK economy for many, many decades to come.

“And we want to make sure that fields that have already got licenses can continue to exploit those reserves and bring them to market.”

Ms Reeves took a massive gamble by hiking taxes by so much in her first Budget and immediately handing most of it over to the NHS with no strings attached.

The economy worsened and her wriggle room – known as fiscal headroom in the trade – was quickly wiped out forcing her to make big spending cuts.

The question now facing the Treasury is can they turn the economy around and get growth going before the end of the year

Or will they come back and hike taxes again in the Autumn Budget.

With Brits already hit by the highest tax burden since the Second World war, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

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