BBC Question Time audience drilled minister David Davies (centre) on the government's handling of public financesBBC Question Time’s audience rinsed the Conservatives last night, pinning the UK’s economic woes squarely on “irresponsible government spending”.
On Thursday evening, a day after chancellor Jeremy Hunt revealed his supposedly tax-cutting Budget, the Welsh secretary David Davies was sent out to defend the new fiscal plan – and was met with a wall of criticism.
One audience member said: “At the end of the day, all of this comes down to irresponsible government spending.
“Everybody’s saying in this Budget you’ve reduced National Insurance contributions by a couple of percent, but it’s offset by other [taxes].”
The government’s decision freeze the income tax threshold means more people are now paying more tax than they would have before, due to inflation and rising salaries – a phenomenon known as fiscal drag.
The Question Time audience member added: “Buy-to-let landlords are suffering, there’s a big housing crisis. It’s all the time, it’s the government’s irresponsible spending.
“They don’t earn the money, so it’s us taxpayers who have to pick up the burden each time.”
He continued: “I would like to see somebody who knows about business in politics that spends the money wisely.”
It’s worth noting the current PM Rishi Sunak has labelled himself as “unashamedly pro-business” in the past.
But the man from the Question Time audience claimed: “They’re just whittling money away, billions, all the time. There are so many schemes out there, HS2, Rwanda, the wars, that’s just been thrown away.
“Even just through Covid with the PPE – it’s been a disgrace.”
Man in grey, "Saying you've reduced National Insurance by a couple of percent, but it's offset by other taxes.. The government don't earn the money, it's us taxpayers who have to pick up the bill each time"
— Farrukh (@implausibleblog) March 7, 2024
Fiona Bruce, "What would you like to see"
Man in grey, "I would like to… pic.twitter.com/Od8Bd0eIrs
And he was not the only person in the crowd to dub the government’s handling of public finances a “disgrace” last night.
One woman told the minister that the 2% National Insurance reduction will put “about £49 in the poorest in society’s pockets for the year”.
She added: “That’s less than a pound a week improvement in what they’ve got to live off. When you take into account everything else that’s gone on, that is a disgrace.”
After Davies suggested he didn’t know who was going to be worse off as a result of the Budget, another person pointedly told the minister: “Everybody is worse off, except the Tories of the government.”
A fourth audience member also skewered the government minister on the panel, asking where the Tories are when it comes to reclaiming the money spent on inadequate PPE.
Davies just said that the UK did not run out of PPE – while host Fiona Bruce cited reports that some NHS workers had to resort to wearing bin bags at the height of the pandemic.
The minister ignored Bruce and said to the audience member: “If anyone has any evidence of PPE that was wrongly supplied, they should come forward.”
