Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been accused of refusing to “face up to her own failures” by “jetting off to Beijing” during a week of market turmoil.
Shadow chancellor Mel Stride accused the chancellor of ducking difficult questions as the “government was losing control of the economy” while Ms Reeves visited China over the past week with a delegation including the governor of the Bank of England and the heads of HSBC, Standard Chartered and Schroders.
On Monday, both long-term 30-year and 10-year government borrowing costs rose, with the 30-year effective interest rate (the gilt yield) reaching a new high of 5.47% – a rate not seen since mid-1998.
The pound also hit a 14-month low, prompting questions over the chancellor’s future.
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She received a slight reprieve on Tuesday morning as the pound recovered some loss and ticked up slightly to $1.22, while government borrowing costs dipped slightly.
But the Conservatives used Ms Reeves’s absence over the past week to attack her, with Mr Stride telling the Commons: “While the government was losing control of the economy, where was the chancellor?
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“Her trip to China had not even begun when my urgent question was taken in the House last week, she was still in the country, but she sent the chief secretary rather than face up to her own failures.
“So can I ask (Rachel Reeves) why she chose not to respond herself? The chancellor, of course, ducked the difficult questions by jetting off to Beijing.
“I believe that in Labour circles, they are calling it the Peking duck.”
But Ms Reeves dismissed the criticism and vowed to stick to the fiscal rules she set out in the October budget – to get day-to-day spending through tax receipts and get debt down as a share of the economy.
“We remain committed to those fiscal rules and we will meet them at all times,” she said.
She also defended her trip to China, saying engaging with countries around the world will “deliver growth”, and said she brought up human rights issues with China.
“Leadership is not about ducking these challenges, it is about rising to them,” she told the Commons.
“And the economic headwinds that we face are a reminder that we should, indeed we must go further and faster in our plan to kickstart economic growth that plunged under the last government.”
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The chancellor said her trip to China has meant greater access to the Chinese market for British firms and helped safeguard the UK’s national security.
New agreements were made on vaccine approvals, fertiliser, whisky labelling, legal services, automotives and accountancy to “unlock £1bn of value for the UK economy”, she said.
Ms Reeves said she raised the case of imprisoned British citizen and media tycoon Jimmy Lai with every minister she met in China.
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She said she also raised concerns about Russia’s war in Ukraine, human rights, restrictions on rights and freedoms in Hong Kong and the “completely unjustified sanctions against British parliamentarians”.
“A key outcome of this dialogue is that we have secured China’s commitment to improve existing channels so that we can openly discuss sensitive issues and the ways in which they impact our economy because if we do not engage with China, we cannot raise our real concerns,” she said.
“This dialogue is just one part of our engagement with trading partners right across the world.”
