Tories plan to extend cuts beyond £47bn if they win next election, leak reveals
Leaked comments by shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith reveal the Conservatives discussed extending cuts beyond the £47bn pledged last year, on the eve of the Tory conference in Birmingham.
The Conservatives are planning sweeping spending cuts beyond the £47bn they announced last year if they win the next election, according to leaked comments by shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith reported by the Guardian.
Speaking last year when he was shadow business secretary, Griffith told Conservative members that he and fellow shadow cabinet ministers had discussed making further cuts in “every part of government”. The comments have emerged on the eve of the Tory party conference in Birmingham, and the paper says they point to cuts on the scale of the post-2008 austerity years.
“There are decisions made and signed up to by everybody to deliver that £47bn. Last week at the shadow cabinet, we talked about [how] we will need to go further,” Griffith said in the comments, adding: “I’m up for that in my department. I know there are areas that we can make savings, and that’s true of every every part of government.”
A Tory spokesperson acknowledged the party was seeking to make cuts beyond what it had already announced, saying that under Kemi Badenoch’s leadership the party had “consistently advocated for a smaller state” and would set out further savings in Birmingham, including more reductions to “Labour’s bloated welfare bill” and a crackdown on wasteful spending.
Badenoch has previously outlined how the government would cut spending by £47bn, mainly by restricting welfare for non-British or EU citizens, saving £8bn by cutting 132,000 civil service jobs, £1.6bn by scrapping almost all of Labour’s clean energy schemes, and more than £7bn by cutting international aid.
On Friday, Badenoch promised a further £4bn of reductions, including another £2.5bn from the aid budget — leaving it with about £1bn a year — and a £1bn cut to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. She said half of the savings would pay for an additional 50,000 prison places.
Griffith was promoted to shadow chancellor in August, after previously working as chief operating officer of Sky. He served in the Treasury under Kwasi Kwarteng and was one of the ministers who defended the 2022 mini-budget as markets fell.
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