In recent Budgets, chancellors have adopted the tradition of hanging balloons in the office of the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to represent spending deals that must be negotiated with government departments.
As settlements are reached, the balloons are popped.
In the exclusive interview, Reeves said: “There are no balloons left in the Chief Secretary’s office – the balloons have been burst.”
In the run-up to the Budget there have been growing reports of unease in the Cabinet over the spending cuts needed to meet the Treasury’s target of finding £40bn of savings.
Sky News reported that the Treasury missed its initial 16 October deadline to finalise all major Budget measures for submission to spending watchdog the Office of Budget Responsibility ahead of the Budget.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner who runs the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, as well as Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Transport Secretary Louise Haigh have all been reported as writing to Sir Keir Starmer to complain about the scale of cuts their departments were facing.
Haigh has since told the she did not write a letter, but had been having Budget negotiations with the Treasury “in the normal way”.
Addressing reports colleagues had gone over her head to take their concerns about budget cuts directly to the prime minister, Reeves said, “I wouldn’t believe everything you read” in the media.
But she went on to say it was “perfectly reasonable that Cabinet colleagues set out their case – both to me as chancellor and to the prime minister, about the scale of the challenges that they find in their departments”.
“I’m very sympathetic towards the mess that my colleagues have inherited”, Reeves said.
“But any additional money, in the end, it has to be paid for either by taking money from other departments or raising taxes.”
