Prime Minister’s Questions: Starmer declines to repeat manifesto pledge not to increase taxes

Back to Badenoch, who pushes on Labour’s tax plans in the upcoming Budget. She says Starmer is no longer ruling tax rises out.

“It is not the same answer that I received when I asked exactly the same question word for word on July 9 [about whether the government will increase taxes]?

“Then, the prime minister replied with just one word, ‘yes’, and then he sat down with a smug grin on his face. What’s changed in the past four months?”

Starmer says he won’t set out Budget plans in advance – but that an ongoing review of expected productivity in the British economy, which is expected to be downgraded, leaving the chancellor with a blackhole, is down to the Conservatives’ economic record.

“I can say this, because the figures on the productivity review that’s being undertaken, this is a judgment on their record in office.

“Those figures are now coming through, and they confirm that the Tories did even more damage to the economy than we previously thought.

“Now, we will turn that around. We’ve already delivered the fastest growth in the G7 in the first half of this year, five interest rate cuts in a row, trade deals with the US, EU and India.

“They broke the economy, we’re fixing it.”