Labour responds to Mel Stride’s conference speech

A Labour Party spokesperson, responding to Mel Stride's Conservative Party Conference speech, said:

“Mel Stride's supposed-savings plan has already fallen apart hours after being announced. The Conservatives claimed they would state how they'd pay for their policies, yet made a multi-billion-pound pledge to abolish business rates without saying how they'd fund it.

“It's the same old Tories, with the same old policies. They didn't work then and you can't trust them now. 

“Only Labour can renew Britain and fix the mess left behind by the Conservatives. We're driving forward growth, securing our borders, and putting money back in people's pockets.”

Ends

Notes:

This is the same old Tories, with the same old policies. They haven't apologised for the mess they left behind. You simply can't trust them:

Welfare spending 

• Mel Stride personally oversaw the biggest increase in benefits spending in decades during his time as Work and Pensions Secretary.
• DWP Social Security spending in Great Britain rose from £233.6bn in 2022/23 to £266.9bn in 2023/24, which is a £33.3bn increase.
• That is the biggest increase since the figures started being collated in 1996/97.

Civil service numbers

• In May 2022, Boris Johnson announced he would cut civil service numbers by 91,000. They went up.
• In October 2023, Jeremy Hunt unveiled an immediate cap on civil service numbers as he pledged to cut them by 66,000. They went up.
• Between May 2022 and July 2024, numbers went up in every single quarter.
• The previous government repeatedly set headcount targets and the civil service grew anyway - with an extra 130,000 civil servants hired from 2016 to when they were booted out.