Oral Answers to Questions

Ed Davey Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the leader of the Liberal Democrats.

[Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

We have just seen in the leaked OBR documents that taxes are going up to a historic record high. Will the Prime Minister explain why Labour is hiking people’s taxes, instead of fixing the £90 billion Brexit black hole in the public finances by growing our economy with a new, detailed, brilliant trade deal with our European partners?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman will only have to wait a few minutes for the full details of the Budget. Every week he comes here with the same problem: he always wants more spending, and he never wants to say how he is going to raise the money for it. The two things cannot go together.

[Ed Davey]

We want to grow the economy, not tax the economy.

Let me take the Prime Minister on to another issue. I hope everyone in the House shares my alarm that a former leader of a political party in Wales has been found guilty of betraying our country, and has now been sentenced to over 10 years in prison for his treachery. The Prime Minister said that Reform should hold an independent investigation and he is right, but we both know that that is not going to happen. Given that Reform will not do so, he must. Will he now launch a national investigation into Russian infiltration into our politics?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to highlight this very serious case: a long sentence for pro-Russian bribery in the Reform party—at the highest level. You would think a leader of a political party would want to get to the bottom of that and ask the question, “How on earth did that happen in the Reform party, and what other links are there between Reform and Russia?” But no, the leader of Reform does not want to do it. We know he does not want to know the answer to the question, because Reform is riddled with pro-Putin propaganda.