Rishi Sunak openly laughed at for claiming Tories left behind a 'robust' economy (original) (raw)

The opposition leader was grilling Keir Starmer at Prime Minister's Questions over the decision to withdraw winter fuel allowance from most pensioners

Rishi Sunak made the outrageous claim at PMQs

Rishi Sunak was openly laughed at as he claimed the Tories left behind a "robust" economy.

The opposition leader was grilling Keir Starmer at Prime Minister's Questions over the decision to withdraw winter fuel allowance from most pensioners. Mr Sunak accused the PM of "choosing train drivers over Britain's most vulnerable pensioners" - after agreeing pay rises to rail staff.

The Prime Minister said the decision had been necessary to "stabilise" the economy - after the Tories left behind a £22 billion "black hole" of unfunded spending. He said: "This Government was elected to clear up the mess left by the party opposite, to bring about the change that the country desperately needs. Our first job was to audit the books, and what we found was a £22 billion black hole."

He added: "So we've had to take tough decisions to stabilise the economy and repair the damage, including targeting winter fuel payments whilst protecting pensioners - 800,000 pensioners are not taking up pension credit. We intend to turn that around. We're going to align housing benefit and pension credit, something the previous government deferred year after year after year."

But Mr Sunak provoked laughter and mockery from both sides of the chamber as he defended his party's record of managing the economy.

"The UK's public finances are more robust than almost any other advanced economy," he claimed. "He inherited a lower deficit than France, America, Italy and Japan. It has the second lowest debt of the entire G7, and he opposed every difficult decision that we took to deliver that."

"He talks about tough decisions," the PM shot back. "It's tough to be left with a £22 billion black hole - that's the inheritance, that's what they left. Under the last government, they would have pretended it wasn't there, they would have walked past it, they'd have left it in the long grass.

"We're not going to do that because we were elected to change this country for the better and stabilise our economy."