Rachel Reeves isn’t just disappointed — she’s angry. The Chancellor stood up at the Despatch Box yesterday and accused the last Conservative government of a cover-up, spending money it did not have and leaving it to her to clean up.
To some extent, Reeves has a point. The £9 billion contingency pot appears to have been spent several times over. Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, acknowledges that overspending on the asylum system was not provided for. The Office for Budget Responsibility has launched a review of what it was told by the Treasury prior to the March Budget. Yet all of this can be true and at the same time, we ought not to be wholly credulous. From public sector pay to prisons, Reeves knew what she would be inheriting.
