Labour Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds said plans to cut overseas aid from 0.7 percent to 0.5 percent of gross national income (GNI) was another example of poor decision making. Speaking to ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Ms Dodds said: “This is part of a series of, sadly, failures to take the right responsible decisions to get our economy on the right path.”
Ms Dodds pointed out that Chancellor Rishi Sunak said the economic emergency was only just beginning, adding: “Try telling that to some of the people who have been unemployed since March.
“Yesterday was a chance for the Chancellor to right that, to make sure that he was putting confidence back into our economy.
“What did he choose to do instead? Well, he hit people’s pockets, he decided to, yes, focus that pay freeze on police and on teachers.
“Now that means they’re not going to be spending in our high streets.”
READ MORE: Rishi Sunak spending pledge to deliver on YOUR priorities – EXCLUSIVE
Ms Reid interjected: “Just to focus on this particular issue, you just mentioned the public sector pay freeze.
“If you are a teacher or police officer and you’re going to see in your income, can you not imagine that a number of those people are going to think it’s absolutely right unfortunately we can’t keep giving money in foreign aid when we can’t even reward those who have worked the hardest.
“As we know the NHS is excluded from the public sector pay freeze.
“The other public sector workers who have worked the hardest through the pandemic, if we can’t even give them a kind of boost.”
She added: “Now actually that’s at a time when the UK, next year, is meant to be exercising global leadership in a whole range of different areas, so a lot of British businesses have been very critical of that decision.”
She said the UK is in a “very, very difficult economic position”.
Ms Dodds said: “We’re experiencing the worst economic downturn in the G7, we needed to see really resolute action to build up confidence, to get those jobs being created again.
“And unfortunately we just didn’t see enough of that from the Chancellor yesterday.”