UK Finance Minister Reeves vows no austerity despite tough budget By Reuters

LIVERPOOL, England (Reuters) – Finance Minister Rachel Reeves will promise Britain on Monday no return to “austerity” or large-scale spending cuts, despite earlier warnings of a tough budget aimed at setting the basics of the economy.

After Labor’s election victory in July, Reeves suggested taxes could rise in her first budget on October 30 because of what she said was a £22 billion ($29 billion) hole in public finances.

She also announced that millions of pensioners would no longer receive fuel payments over the winter, a decision the government says it did not want to make, but which unions and other traditional Labor supporters have criticized .

At the Labor Party conference in the northern English city of Liverpool, Reeves will use Monday’s speech to reiterate that he will take the necessary decisions to provide the stability he said was “the essential precondition for businesses to invest with confidence and families to plan the future”.

“There will be no going back to austerity. Conservative austerity was a destructive choice for our public services – and for investment and growth,” Reeves will say, according to extracts from her speech.

“We have to deal with the Conservative legacy and that means tough decisions. But we will not let that dampen our ambition for Britain.”

Amid criticism that Reeves and Prime Minister Keir Starmer had taken too bleak a view, which, along with the furor over the donations, threw a damper on what would otherwise have been a Labor celebration of its first election victory while for 14 years, she will suggest that a brighter future beyond the difficult circumstances she has inherited.

“I see the prize on offer if we make the right choices now. And stability is the crucial foundation on which all our ambitions will be built,” she will say.

Reeves will also reiterate that Labour’s manifesto pledges not to raise income tax, National Insurance social security payments, value added tax and corporation tax.