John McDonnell has called on Phillip Hammond to end austerity measures in public services.
The shadow chancellor feared that next weeks’ budget would not do enough to tackle the shortage of housing law and health.
McDonnell told BBC Breakfast on Thursday: “My worry is that this budget will be more about saving Theresa May’s job and Philip Hammond’s job rather than addressing the real needs of our country,”
“We need an emergency budget to tackle the very real emergencies our public services are having to address.”
McDonnell confirmed Labour’s commitment to crack down on tax avoidance and corporate tax cuts. The commitment to tax avoidance and tax cuts will raise £23.5 billion, which would be used for public spending.
“I cut that down to £6.5 billion to give it a bit of leeway; now we know from the Paradise Papers it must be significantly more than that. Even the government now is going to have to address this, because people will feel that unfairness of having their public services cut whilst this tax avoidance is going on.”
Speaking to Sky News, McDonnell said that business leaders and Conservatives alike were growing concerned about the effects that austerity was having for public spending cuts.
“I think there is a growing consensus now that austerity has to end. We have to invest for the future,”
“Our services are facing an emergency on the ground, so this should be an emergency budget that concentrates on investing in our public services. Lifting the pay cap because things are so serious now.”
McDonnell has highlighted the critical impacts that cut to public spending will have on the NHS, education and the police force.
“We’ve had the chief executive of the NHS [setting out] the scale of the crisis that we have in our NHS; and … the person who is responsible for advising the government on terrorism [is] saying that we can’t combat terrorism if we have this level of police cuts.”