Reeves says she did not lie about public finances amid row over deficit claims – UK politics live

Chancellor grilled on Sunday morning shows over whether she misled the public about the state of the economyReeves says freezing tax thresholds was “the right thing” to do to safeguard spending commitments, and investment in the NHS.Reeves is being interviewed by the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. Rachel Reeves was told the Treasury “very deliberately” created the impression she had to put people’s taxes up to fill a “big gap in the public finances that simply didn’t exist”.I do not accept that at all. The OBR numbers themselves, which I agree with and we knew they were going to be published, they are very clear that there was less fiscal space than there was just a few months ago in the spring. And we needed not less but more fiscal headroom …Kuennsberg interrupts to say the chancellor didn’t need an extra £26bn in extra taxes to fill the fiscal black hole.The numbers that