Opposition motion calls for Chancellor Rachel Reeves to be sacked

Wakefield Council’s Conservative and Independent group has called for the debate, claiming Ms Reeves has caused “untold pain, suffering and hardship” to working people since July last year.

The motion, to be considered at a full council meeting on January 29, levels a range of criticism at the Chancellor and the Labour government.

It says: “Almost everything the Chancellor could get wrong has gone wrong and the residents of the Wakefield district and the country are all paying the very high price of her gross economic failures.”

The group said the Mid Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce, which covers business in Wakefield, described the results of the latest quarterly economic survey as “painting a grim picture”.

The motion also states: “The Chancellor and her cabinet colleagues were taking freebies from friends to fund expensive new clothes and trinkets in order to look good at the despatch box while announcing more cuts, taxes, pain and misery for already struggling families.

“The Chancellor axed the winter fuel payment for ten million pensioners with Labour’s own research showing that thousands of vulnerable elderly people will die as a result.”

The Chancellor was also criticised for raising employer national insurance contributions in the autumn budget.

The group said: “The Chancellor has destroyed UK confidence as businesses have stopped investing and consumers have stopped spending.

“The Chancellor is single-handedly bringing us into recession with her disastrous policies, increasing the torment and hardship of working people.

“Hitting a fragile economy with a whopping tax raid not seen in decades.”

The motion, to be put forward by Nick Farmer, Tory councillor for Ossett ward, calls on councillors to agree to write to prime minister Keir Starmer to “urgently implore him, on behalf of the residents of the Wakefield district, to sack the Chancellor of the Exchequer with immediate effect.”

Labour holds 56 out of 63 Wakefield Council seats.