"For you to have signed up to this list of spending commitments in the year.. it’s unprecedented Mr Hunt"
Jeremy Hunt was confronted in an interview this morning with the Chancellor Rachel Reeve’s claim that the last Government had left a £22bn financial black hole in spending, in an excruciating exchange.
The significant overspend was put to Hunt on the Good Morning Show, in an interview that saw the former Chancellor accused of failing to answer the question, bashing the junior doctors’ pay settlement and defending the Rwanda scheme.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is launching an investigation into Jeremy Hunt’s previous spending forecasts about the shortfall, claiming that the last government could be responsible for “one of the largest year-ahead overspends.”
Reeves said there was a £6.5bn shortfall on housing asylum seekers that the Conservatives hadn’t made public, Hunt disputed this and said he hadn’t agreed on the figure, because the party was banking on sending asylum seekers to Rwanda.
However the Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies Paul Johnson backed Reeves, saying she had proven “genuinely unfunded” commitments were made by the last government, particularly on asylum seekers housing.
When confronted with the lack of transparency over the figures during the interview, Hunt claimed “it would not have cost that money if Conservatives had been in office because we would have had flights gone to Rwanda.”
Ed Balls cut in: “You didn’t have any flights going to Rwanda.”
Hunt replied: “Yes, I know, and they were about to go to Rwanda.”
Estimates suggest at least £318 million has been spent on the inhumane Rwanda scheme, on top of the huge emotional cost to those seeking asylum who faced prolonged uncertainty about their future.
Ed Balls then laid into the former Chancellor, expressing disbelief that Hunt would have signed up to the measures it appears he did for this financial year, concluding that he must have been instructed by the Prime Minister to do so.
Balls said: “For you to have signed up to this list of spending commitments in the year, blowing your own reserve and not making them public to Parliament, it’s unprecedented Mr Hunt, surely somebody else told you to do this.”
Hunt accused Mr Balls of having “the same mock outrage” as Rachel Reeves.
Journalist Ian Dunt said: “Dreadful. Far from reducing asylum costs, Rwanda increased them, because the government chose to freeze applications in preparation for an offshoring programme which never had capacity, leading to an increase in accommodation costs. Almost nothing Hunt says is true.”
One X user said: “”I didn’t agree to £6.4bn for the Home Office to house asylum seekers because it wouldn’t have cost that much…because the Rwanda policy would have worked, ie reduced asylum seeker numbers…”. What an unbelievable way to budget. ‘Dissembling’ – a kind description for dishonesty.”
(Image credit: Good Morning Britain)
Hannah Davenport is news reporter at Left Foot Forward
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