Portrait of the week: Stabbings in Southport, a £22bn ‘black hole’ and Tory leadership nominations

Home

Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said she had found a £21.9 billion hole, and a black one at that, ‘covered up’ by the Tories in the finances Labour inherited. ‘The biggest single cause of the £22 billion fiscal hole was Reeves’s decision to give inflation-busting pay rises to public sector workers,’ the Financial Times reported. Junior doctors were offered an average rise of 22 per cent over two years. The Chancellor told the Commons that the government was cancelling: the universal winter fuel payment; the cap on the amount people must spend on funding their social care; A-level reforms; and a tunnel near Stonehenge. Jeremy Hunt, the former chancellor, noted that estimates had been ‘signed off by senior civil servant accounting officers’. Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, announced central powers to impose housing. The High Court ruled that a ban on puberty blockers introduced by the previous government was lawful.