Squirming Labour minister dodges Sky questions over tax hikes and Budget ‘mistake’

A Labour Cabinet minister dodged questions on more tax rises and if the hikes in the Budget were a “mistake”.

Science Secretary Peter Kyle was asked about the Chancellor’s pledge that she had “wiped the slate clean” and would not be back for more.

Pressed twice if that was still the case amid economic turmoil, he told Sky News’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips programme: “When the Chancellor speaks, she speaks for the Government.

“And my job is to make sure I put her words into action so I’m keeping a tight grip on my own department so we don’t have to come back with the additional pressure.

“Over the summer we got everything out into the open. At the autumn Budget the Chancellor reset our finances, she fixed the foundations.”

Asked twice if the tax-hiking Budget was a “mistake” following a business backlash, Mr Kyle added: “If we hadn’t had that Budget I could not be sat here talking about an investment programme that will get our country fit for the future in the areas where growth is going to come from.

“We always said we could’t fix the country in six months. After an election you don’t go back to zero, you don’t start from a clean sheet, you start from where the predecessors left off.

“They left us with a broken economy, public services on their knees and our international relationships in tatters.

“We’ve fixed the foundations and now we’re building on them.”

It comes as increases in the Government’s borrowing costs have sparked concern that the Chancellor will be unable to meet her debt and spending targets, requiring either tax rises or deeper spending cuts when she delivers a fiscal statement at the end of March.