Kemi Badenoch has accused Rachel Reeves' Spring Statement as being "all smoke and mirrors", pointing to rising inflation, increased unemployment and low growth. The Conservative Party leader added, "something has to change, this is chaos". Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00I think that it was all smoke and mirrors.
00:03I remember the last budget when Rachel Reeves said she was smashing glass ceilings.
00:08Now it feels like the roof is falling over all our heads.
00:11Inflation is up 2.6% to 3.2%.
00:15Unemployment is going up and it's forecast to go higher year after year after year.
00:21That's people's jobs out there. That's terrible.
00:24And growth has halved.
00:25Even the forecasts which she said were promising are lower than what they were last year.
00:30Something has to change. This is chaos.
00:32Well, I wouldn't have made a lot of the decisions that she's made that are causing those problems.
00:36Some of those decisions we've talked about, you know, taxing farmers, small businesses.
00:42But the national insurance rise in particular has been a catastrophe.
00:46It's affected everybody, not just businesses in the private sector.
00:50Charities, hospices, schools, GP surgeries, they're all having to pay money.
00:56And in the public sector, that still comes from taxes.
00:59So we've got nowhere.
01:00Well, we had a plan. We had a costed plan for welfare reforms, saving $5 billion over the period.
01:06But there was more that we had put in our manifesto.
01:09We had a plan even before the election.
01:11They scrapped our plans and then they've now rushed out scrambling things together at the last minute
01:17because they were not ready for government.
01:19They might have been ready for an election, but they had no plan for the reality of government.
01:23And everything they're doing is in haste.
01:25It's at the last minute. It's not fully thought through.
01:28They're having to make changes. And this is just chaos.