Rachel Reeves’ already battered credibility has taken another serious hit after the Treasury was forced to quietly correct the parliamentary record, again, following a series of bungled statements by the Chancellor on unemployment and her flagship pension reforms.
Hansard, the official transcript of Parliament, has been amended after Ms Reeves repeatedly got her figures wrong, raising yet more doubts about her much-vaunted reputation for “seriousness” with the nation’s finances.
In one glaring mistake, the Chancellor told MPs that the £425bn Local Government Pension Scheme was managed by “96 different administering authorities” and would be consolidated into “eight pools” under her reforms. The Treasury was later compelled to admit the true figures: there are 86 authorities, set to be reduced to six pools.
Nor did Ms Reeves fare any better in front of the Lords’ economic affairs committee. There, she claimed Britain had “20pc of people of working age who are economically inactive and an unemployment rate of just over 4pc.” Yet the latest Office for National Statistics release puts inactivity at 21pc and unemployment at 4.7pc.
The Treasury’s corrections, first reported by the Mail on Sunday, are only the latest in a pattern of slip-ups. Earlier this year, Ms Reeves had to retract an overblown claim about wage growth, having wrongly declared that pay had been rising at its fastest pace since Labour came to power. In fact, the increase was merely the fastest in three years.
The picture is becoming clear: a Chancellor with a shaky grip on detail, fumbling her way through briefings and statistics at the very moment she is preparing a Budget where she could demand as much as £50bn in new taxes.
Andrew Griffith, the Shadow Business Secretary, was blunt: “When she’s writing such big cheques with taxpayers’ money, it’s no time to be loose with your numbers.”
With wealth creators and top taxpayers fleeing the country, and businesses shutting their doors at record pace, economists warn that the Chancellor’s policies have shattered confidence and choked off investment. Now, with the Budget fast approaching, the pressing question is whether Rachel Reeves has either the grip or the competence to steady an economy already on the brink.
And this is not the first time her credibility has been dented. Only months ago, Ms Reeves was caught exaggerating her CV, wrongly claiming to have worked as an economist at the Bank of Scotland and overstating her tenure at the Bank of England.
For a politician who has tried to pitch herself as a steady hand on the tiller, the catalogue of errors, corrections, and lies are becoming hard to ignore. The Treasury itself has now had to act as fact-checker in chief, cleaning up behind the Chancellor’s repeated gaffes.
When Britain faces one of the most challenging fiscal outlooks in a generation, the country can ill afford a Chancellor who can’t get the basics right.
Worth reading in full at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/08/17/reeves-forced-correct-parliamentary-record-figures-wrong/
I think it just proves that everything Starmer said pre-election was just to make the nation believe. Since then, he has proved he’s not equipped to run the country and he cannot see the idiots around him. He’s bankrupting the country, he has done little or nothing to prove he has illegal immigration in hand. We are a sinking ship and we are openly being hailed as the go to country for hand outs. Shame on them for not putting us first. See to your own first. So many homeless needing help and had none.
Starmer doesn’t care, he’s having his moment of glory being Prime Minister. Labour won’t get in again for a very long time, people have long memories. But hey he doesn’t care, his poor up coming MPs are the one’s that will pay for this, their chances of becoming Prime Minister is very slim.