Labour call for ‘change of course’ in Budget demands

CHANCELLOR PHILIP Hammond must produce an ‘emergency Budget’ next week to save the country’s crisis-hit public services, Labour will say today.

In a speech at Church House in London, shadow Chancellor John McDonnell will set out the five main demands Labour wants to see in Wednesday’s Autumn Budget.

He is calling on Mr Hammond to change course, by “abandoning his planned tax giveaways to a wealthy few and instead bringing greater fairness into the tax system”. Among the five Labour Party demands are pausing and fixing the Government’s Universal Credit reforms, providing new funding to lift the public sector pay cap and launching a largescale public house-building programme.

Mr McDonnell will also call for extra funding for infrastructure nationwide and for the Government to “properly fund our public services including health, education, and local government”.

He will say: “In his first year as Chancellor, Philip Hammond has demonstrated that he completely fails to understand how working people are struggling after seven years of Tory austerity.

“Next week the country needs an ‘emergency Budget’ for our public services that are in crisis, not a budget desperately designed to save the jobs of a weak Prime Minister and her embattled Chancellor. There has to be a genuine and decisive change of course.

“As the Paradise Papers revealed yet again, the Tories have created an economy in which the rich elite at the top do better than ever, while the rest of us have to live with our vital public services teetering on the brink.”