‘Labour’s Changing Into The Tories’: Trevor Phillips Challenges Wes Streeting Over Welfare And Aid Cuts

A Sky News presenter told Wes Streeting that people believe “Labour’s changing into the Tories” over the party’s plans to cut international aid and the welfare bill.

Trevor Phillips challenged the health secretary as the government prepares to unveil controversial reforms to the benefits system as it tries to save up to £6 billion.

Phillips told Streeting that former Labour cabinet minister Ed Balls had said cutting benefits was “not a Labour thing to do”.

The presenter said: “You more or less bragged that you are doing the things that the Conservative Party wanted to do but didn’t do. You said ‘I bet they’re glad that people chose change with Labour’.

“Some of your less favourable friend are saying that the change with Labour is that Labour’s changing into the Tories.”

But Streeting said: “I reject that argument. I don’t think that it is a Labour argument to say that we would want people consigned to a life on benefit and not able to go to work.”

Phillips interrupted him to say: “Aid cuts, winter fuel allowance, benefit cuts.”

The health secretary replied: “I would also say that the situation we’ve inherited in terms of the level of spending, the level of borrowing, the level of national debt, that is not a position that the Labour Party is happy with.

“What we are absolutely doing is trying to reform the state so it’s more effective, get our economy growing gain so that we can invest in our public service without hiking taxes and put more money into people’s pockets. Those are Labour things to do.”