A cabinet minister has accused former PM Rishi Sunak of “deliberately covering up” the country’s crises when he was in government.
Speaking on Sky News’ Sunday with Trevor Phillips, the environment secretary, Steve Reed, said the Tories had left the country in a much worse state than previously expected – and that Labour were only just discovering how bad it is.
Reed claimed the Conservatives left a “catastrophic” inheritance behind – although Phillips replied: “Is there an element of, let’s call it ‘Kabuki theatre’ here?”
He pointed out that chancellor Rachel Reeves herself said in June that, “we’ve got the OBR [Office for Budget Responsibility] now, we know things are in a pretty bad state, you don’t win at the election to find that out.’”
Reeves is expected to say the Tories left a £20bn black hole in a speech to parliament on Monday.
Phillips continued: “Yet now, you’re suddenly going, ‘oh my god, there’s all these things we didn’t know.’
“Was she wrong then or is she just doing theatre now?”
“Well there are things outside of what the OBR are covering,” Reed said, pointing to the overcrowding in prisons which he claimed the Tories had not been upfront about.
But Phillips recalled a previous Labour press release about the overcrowding, suggesting the party knew about the crisis ahead of the getting into government.
“There isn’t anything new that you could not have known,” the Sky News host said.
Reed hit back: “We know now the prime minister received a letter from civil servants a week before he called the election warning him about this critical failure point, and that judges would no longer be able to send convicted criminals to prison if they deserve custodial sentence.”
Phillips said: “My point is, you and your colleagues would come in here, week after week after week, saying, ‘we don’t believe them, it’s worse than they’re saying.’
“And now suddenly you’re discovering that it’s worse than they were saying!”
“It’s not only that we didn’t know – the prime minister deliberately covered it up! They covered it up!” Reed said.
He then pointed to the real cost of the Rwanda scheme.
He said the Tories said they had spent £400m to send four volunteers to Rwanda, but Labour say they have just found out they actually spent £700m.
The cabinet minister added: “We want to get away from the politics of denial and cover-up.”