Reeves defends 'fair and necessary' £26bn tax raid

Rachel Reeves has defended her £26bn Budget tax raid as “fair and necessary”, insisting the wealthy should share more of the economic “burden”.

- BRYONY GOOCH

The chancellor was accused of misleading the public on the state of the country's finances to justify her tax hikes after she insisted she had to make “hard choices”, despite knowing her deficit had disappeared and that she instead had a £4.2bn surplus.

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) now faces calls to investigate whether the Treasury misled the public about the scale of the financial repair job after the Scottish National Party (SNP) wrote to the watchdog asking it to look into claims of “deliberately false and misleading” briefings.

In an interview with The Guardian, Ms Reeves doubled down on her move to bring in 43 separate taxes and freeze income tax thresholds, dragging millions more into paying higher taxes, saying she was unwilling to make cuts.

"I wasn't willing to cut public services, because people voted for change at the election," she said.

The chancellor insisted it should be the responsibility of Britain’s wealthy to take on the burden of rebuilding the country’s “creaky” public services, and denied that working-age people were being asked to carry more of the burden than pensioners after they were excluded from many of her new measures.

“It’s quite clear that the economic burden in the Budget was not about age. It was about wealth,” she said. “People who bear more of the burden are those with big incomes and assets... so I don't accept that.