On the eve of the autumn budget, Sunday’s politics shows were dominated by discussion of how Philip Hammond will deliver the Prime Minister’s bold claim that “austerity is over”.
The Chancellor told Sky’s Sophy Ridge that it was obvious to voters there had been “enormous pressure” on public services in recent years while the Conservative Party “dealt with the aftermath of Labour’s recession”, but branded the current moment a “turning point”.
Describing his budget to BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, so-called ‘Spreadsheet Phil’ said: “I’ve chosen a balanced approach, which places equal weight on getting the debt down, keeping taxes low, supporting public services and investing in the skills and infrastructure and technology that will drive Britain’s future prosperity.”
He said that money would be made available to local authorities for urgent road repairs, adding that he would be making an “important announcement’ on the hypothecation of vehicle excise duty.
But, overall, the Cabinet minister’s appearances did little to contradict claims he would be forced to produce an “on-the-fence” budget thanks to the Tories’ lack of majority in Parliament and the looming Brexit deal.
Not only did Hammond tell Ridge that the government had already made it’s biggest budget announcement back in June when it pledged to increase NHS funding by £20 billion a year by 2023, but he refused to be pinned down on whether the government would make a financial commitment to tackle the issues plaguing universal credit.
Arguing that he had already pumped more than £2 billion into the welfare scheme over the past two budgets, he said: “We continue to look at how this process is working and if we find cliff edges and difficulties - frictions - in the move from the old system to universal credit, then of course we will try and smooth these out and be pragmatic about this.”
But it was Brexit that presented itself as the biggest threat to Hammond’s anti-austerity budget.
The Runnymede and Weybridge MP revealed that the UK’s current economic plans would have to be scrapped in the case of a no-deal Brexit, with the budget based on the assumption the UK will be able to negotiate a deal with the EU.
Insisting that he was still “very confident” the UK will not crash out of the EU, he said a new budget “that set out a different strategy for the future” would need to be drawn up.
As expected, the Chancellor’s comments drew criticism from both sides of the political divide.
Tory backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg said the government should be “making announcements now about how we would deal leaving on World Trade Organisation terms”, adding that the Treasury had been “the bastion of Remoanerism since the referendum”.
There is an element of the Treasury that is “still grumpy about Brexit”, Rees-Mogg said.
Meanwhile, shadow chancellor John McDonnell called Hammond’s interview “shocking”, saying May’s right-hand-man had “accepted a no-deal Brexit”.
But it was the Chancellor’s failure to commit to more funding for universal credit that really fired up fury from the Labour front-bencher, with McDonnell accusing Hammond of “callous complacency”.
“If he doesn’t halt the roll-out of universal credit, we have got to vote this budget down,” McDonnell told Ridge. “We’ve got to stop him forcing people into poverty in this way.”
But the shadow chancellor faced his own grilling from Andrew Marr, who asked how Labour could meet its vow to reverse the effects of austerity with the fairly conservative programme it set out in its grey book.
Asked specifically how 10,000 new police officers promised by Labour would make up for the 21,000 lost under austerity, McDonnell said: “We’re trying to scale up as best as we possibly can. I don’t want to overpromise.
“As we grow the economy… we will be able to afford more. But I want to do this in a way people can see is extremely responsible, but in a staged approach.”
Finally, former education secretary Justine Greening called on Hammond to use the budget as an opportunity to attract a “brand new generation” of voters who have only seen the Tory party implement austerity with a programme of social mobility.
“This is the most important budget in a decade,” Greening told Ridge. “The Conservative Party has just spent the last 10 years sorting out the mess of the last Labour government… but we can’t just be defined as the party that cleans up after the last Labour government.”