REEVES ACCUSED OVER 'BOGUS' £40BN BLACK HOLE

RACHEL Reeves has been accused of using a "bogus" £40billion black hole to justify hammering taxpayers.

- Sam Listeror

Senior Tories claim the Chancellor has invented the shortfall in public finances to camouflage brutal measures in her first Budget on October 30. The sum is nearly double the gap that Ms Reeves first claimed leading experts to claim Rishi Sunak's warning that a Labour win would mean a £2,000 tax bombshell was "pretty bang on".

Tory MPs called the £40billion figure a "poor attempt" to justify harsh tax rise measures that Labour had been planning all along.

Shadow Treasury Minister John Glen said: "This supposed black hole is fundamentally a product of Labour's own decisions.

"During the election, we publicly called out Labour's planned profligacy. We warned that their many unfunded spending commitments would run into the tens of billions of pounds. We made clear that it would be the public that would have to pay the price for this.

"So once again we are seeing Labour talk up a black hole but, like all of their claims that have come before, it is bogus."

He warned: "The public should not swallow any of this latest nonsense, and see it instead for what it truly is another poor attempt to justify the Budget they have been planning all along that will be deeply damaging for growth, for investment, for our economy and for the public's purses."