The Conservatives are planning to make sweeping cuts beyond the £47bn announced last year if they win the next election, according to leaked comments by the shadow chancellor. Speaking last year when he was shadow business secretary, Andrew Griffith told Conservative members he and fellow shadow cabinet ministers had discussed making further cuts in “every part of government”. The comments, which have emerged on the eve of the Tory party conference in Birmingham, suggested that the Conservatives are planning to make cuts similar in scale to those made during the austerity years should they take power.
Last October, Griffith said: “There are decisions made and signed up to by everybody to deliver that £47bn. Last week at the shadow cabinet, we talked about [how] we will need to go further. I know there are areas that we can make savings, and that’s true of every every part of government.” He added: “There is a moral mission to get our economy growing, give people opportunity, as well as let people keep more of what they earn.
We’re Conservative, this is what we stand for.” A Tory spokesperson acknowledged the party was seeking to make cuts beyond what it had already announced. The plans would also save £8bn by cutting 132,000 civil service jobs, another £1.6bn by scrapping almost all of Labour’s clean energy scheme and more than £7bn by cutting international aid. In August she promoted Griffith, who previously worked as chief operating officer for Sky, from his role as shadow business secretary.
In government, Griffith worked in the Treasury under Kwasi Kwarteng and was one of the ministers tasked with defending the mini-budget even as the markets tanked in response. On Friday Badenoch promised another £4bn of spending reductions, including taking another £2.5bn out of the aid budget – leaving it with just £1bn as year – as well as reducing the budget of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport by £1bn. The Tory leader said she would use half of those savings to pay for an additional 50,000 prison places.
She has previously promised to use half of any cuts she makes to reduce the deficit. Griffiths’ leaked comments come as the Tories prepare to gather in Birmingham for their annual conference, with Badenoch seeking to make a virtue of the growing distance between Labour’s plans for government and her own. The prime minister, Andy Burnham, has promised a series of potentially expensive interventions, including a new national care service and public control over utility companies, as he seeks to end what he calls “40 years of neoliberalism”.
However, Badenoch, who has called Margaret Thatcher her hero, is attempting to gain an electoral advantage with her vision of lower taxes and a significantly smaller state.
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