Prime Minister's Questions (asking, as Leader of the Opposition)

May I congratulate the Prime Minister on his stamina? Three hours! Yesterday, he faced 125 questions from MPs across the House. Of course, Labour and the Lib Dems just wanted more Government spending—that is, taxpayers’ money—but can he name a single spending request to which he answered no?

The Prime Minister avoided the question. He did not say no to a single spending request. Personally, I think it is delightful that he wants to make everyone happy, but a Prime Minister needs to be a leader, not a people pleaser. He is talking about working together on welfare. I already made that offer, but it does mean cuts—he wants to bring the welfare bill down by spending more money. Yesterday, the Prime Minister told the House that his summer of promises would be paid for by “reprioritising within Government”, so what exactly has he cut?

I asked what the Prime Minister cut. He says tax cuts. He has not said where the money is coming from. He talks about digital ID—[Interruption.] Yes, I know he said digital ID, but the Chief Secretary to the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), said that there was no money allocated to digital ID. You cannot cut something that never existed in the first place.

Lord O’Neill, a close friend of the Prime Minister, said yesterday’s statement in the Commons was

“the last thing investors wanted to hear”.

Lord O’Neill is a serious economist. He knows what he is talking about. Sure enough, yesterday the cost of Government borrowing rose to its highest in 18 years. How does the Prime Minister plan to tackle the Government’s rising debt costs?

I do not know what any of that has to do with tackling the cost of increasing debt. Collaborating with Jim O’Neill is not how we are going to get debt costs down, and he said yesterday that the markets would be worried. The markets are clearly worried that we now have a spendthrift Prime Minister who wants to say yes to everyone but cannot tell us where the money is coming from. He needs to pay for all his new promises, and he has a choice: higher taxes, more borrowing or spending cuts. Yesterday he said, “Change begins with honesty”, so will he be honest and tell us: is he preparing to raise taxes again—yes or no?

The whole House will have heard that the Prime Minister did not rule out tax rises. Instead, what he did was lots of point scoring. He says he wants a new politics; he says he wants honestly, so why is he pretending that a junior Minister wrote that Budget? The fact is that gilt yields now, the cost of borrowing now—[Interruption.] Labour Members are laughing; I do not know why they are laughing. The cost of borrowing now is far more than it ever was under Liz Truss. The reason why that Budget failed is that spending was announced before the money to pay for it, which is exactly what the Prime Minister is doing right now. He says it is the new politics; it is the same old Labour politics—tax and spend. He did not rule out tax rises, and what markets see is a Government that cannot control their spending, so the markets will charge us more to borrow. That means higher mortgage rates for families. It makes life more difficult for businesses, and that pushes up the cost of living for everyone. Higher borrowing costs are the biggest threat to family finances, so will he rule out any more borrowing that will make people poorer?

The right hon. Gentleman is the Prime Minister now and he needs to answer the questions, instead of spending time attacking someone who has more private sector experience than his entire Cabinet. I asked him whether he would rule out more borrowing. He did not do so. We spend more servicing our debt than we do on defence—almost double. There is war in Europe. Yesterday, Germany confirmed that Russia was behind the attack on Leipzig airport. Tensions are so high that the director of the CIA flew to Moscow. We need the plan to hit 3% of GDP on defence now, but the armed forces will not know what they will be getting until next July’s spending review. There is a simple answer to this: cut welfare spending and invest that money in our defence now. Mr Speaker, the honeymoon is over. Isn’t it time for the Prime Minister to ditch the vibes and get serious about defending our nation?