Balls bid to boost party on economy - The Press Association

(UKPA) – 3 hours ago 

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls is to seek to restore public confidence in Labour's economic competence by telling the party's conference that he can make no promises to reverse coalition cuts or tax rises.

In a move that may anger rank-and-file members and unions campaigning against cuts in public services, Mr Balls will say that, almost four years ahead of the expected date of the general election, Labour cannot make pledges to restore spending slashed by the Government.

And he will seek to allay voters' fears that a future Labour Government might drive the deficit back up, by promising to submit the party to tough new rules requiring it to keep debt down.

The rules - which would bar a future Labour chancellor from allowing the national deficit to swell as it did under Gordon Brown - will be included in Labour's manifesto for the next general election and will be subject to monitoring by the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, Mr Balls will say.

The shadow chancellor will also promise to use any profits from the sale of the state share in RBS and Lloyds to pay down Britain's debts, rather than to fund a pre-election give-away to voters, as he says Conservatives and Liberal Democrats would do.

The move would echo Mr Brown's decision in 2000 to use £22.5 billion from the sale of third-generation mobile phone licenses to pay off debt.

Speaking ahead of his keynote speech to Labour's annual conference in Liverpool, Mr Balls made clear he will resist activists' demands to reverse public sector spending cuts.

He told The Independent: "No matter how much we dislike particular Tory spending cuts or tax rises, we can't make promises now to reverse them. I'm clear that I won't do that and neither will any of my shadow cabinet colleagues."

Despite consistently leading the Conservatives by as much as 11 points in the polls this year, Labour regularly trails Tories badly when voters are asked which party they trust to run the economy.

Mr Balls will accuse Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne of "getting the economy badly wrong" and choking off a fragile recovery by cutting too hard and too fast since the coalition Government came to power last year.

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