John McDonnell MP, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, responding to newly published ONS public sector borrowing figures showing a £2 billion surplus on public sector net borrowing (excluding public sector banks) in July 2018, said:

“The Chancellor has passed on the deficit to his colleagues in other departments: record NHS deficits, schools begging parents for money for essentials, and a growing social care crisis.

“Hard pressed families and underpaid public sector workers have been made to pay for the price of Tory failure on the economy, with brutal cuts to social provision and relentless pay restraint.

“Labour in government will be a government for the many, not the few, will reverse the disastrous Tory austerity agenda and give workers a decent pay increase with our £10 Real Living Wage.”