Chuka Umunna: "Our plans do not include any cuts to public spending"

23 November 2019, 14:02

The party, who some might blame for bringing in austerity during the Coalition Government, have pledged to not make any spending cuts.

Matt Frei said to Chuka Ummuna: "You also the party that in Coalition helped to bring in an era of austerity and public service cuts, which you didn't campaign for but you were forced into, you agreed to when you were in Coalition.

"The Tories may well get punished for it in this election, and you might get punished with them.

You talk about the chaos of the last three years. When it comes to the era of austerity, you were there at the birth."

Umunna said that he didn't approve of the Coalition's response. He exclaimed that his issue was "the mix of spending cuts and tax rises that were made to shoulder the burden - and too much of it was spending cuts."

He continued: "Now the important thing is what are we actually offering at this General Election. Our spending plans do not include any, any cuts to public spending.

"We've identified progressive tax rises to pay for all the things that we are seeking to implement.

"And secondly, you cannot end austerity and seek to leave the European Union. There is no way you can square the circle.

"And there's a third point, actually, if you want to deliver all of these big infrastructure projects and capital spending projects that actually all three of the main parties are committed to, you need the people to deliver them.

And if you end free movement with the European Union, which essentially is what both of the main parties are proposing to do, then you're going to end up with a situation where we need more construction workers, and actually a large number of our construction workers come from the EU, but we won't be able to get them to build these projects."