A £515m black hole has been identified in her budget

The Tory Party’s London mayoral hopeful has been accused by Labour of proposing spending plans “straight out of the Liz Truss playbook” after the opposition party identified unfunded spending plans. 

The Tory Party’s waning argument of being ‘the party of sound money’ is contested once again, as Labour have warned that the party’s candidate for London mayor, Susan Hall, has made pledges that amount to a £515m budget black hole. 

Based on her manifesto promises including plans to scrap ULEZ in outer London, the Labour party calculated that the Tory candidate’s policies come at a large, unfunded cost. 

Shadow paymaster general Jonathan Ashworth said Hall’s pledges were, “straight from the Liz Truss playbook – reckless, irresponsible and uncosted.”

“With a black hole of more than £500m in her spending plans, it will be Londoners who would pay the price, with huge cuts to services or hikes in council tax and transport fares,” Ashworth said. 

“Londoners can’t afford this latest version of Trussonomics to be implemented in the capital. Susan Hall’s proposals are the most irresponsible set of plans from any major party candidate in the history of the mayoralty.”

Hall has previously thanked Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng for their disastrous mini-budget, writing in a post on X about their budget, “Oh deep joy, a proper Conservative government”.

A Conservative campaign spokesperson said: “Susan’s commitments are fully costed and accounted for, much of which will be covered by cutting the ridiculous amount of waste in City Hall and TfL”.

With her election campaign already under scrutiny after fact checkers raised concerns over the use of “deceptive” leaflets, her spending black hole poses another set back for the Tory election candidate who is currently 19 points behind current Labour mayor Sadiq Khan.

Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward

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