Post your questions for Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer

[JustineMumsnet]

Hi all,
Next week we’ll be back in Westminster to put your questions to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves MP.
If there’s something you’d like me to ask her - from the big economic picture to how the cost of living is affecting families (or anything else) - then please post your question below.

As ever, one question per user please, and keep it civil. We’ll be tight on time, so short, focused questions will help us get through as many as possible.

We’ll close the thread early on Sunday evening, so please do get your questions in before then. We’ll be back soon with her responses.

Thanks,
Justine

Absolutely this. People are just sick of others taking the piss whilst the rest of us graft away until 67 to pay for it. I work as a benefit advisor and of course help a lot of genuine claimants who cannot work but there are also so many who have basically never worked. It's just sickening.

Also this question but more specifically in relation to single parents who already bear more expense alone and are further exploited by the tax system.

Well said

This question please!

Did you realise the impact the combination of hiking NI for employers and the latest MW rise would have on the job market AND the impact the renters right bill would have on an already catastrophic housing market ? If not, have yoh sacked the civil servants who are paid to advise you and if so why on earth did you proceed with this disastrous policy decisions? Coming from a loyal labour voter….

Let's hope she particularly focuses on the ones asking when she's going to resign and enable someone with an ounce of competence an attempt at fixing all of her mistakes.

I’m over 40 and I’m still paying off the student debts accrued when I was 18-21. I now have two children at university who have both taken on student loans which are at a higher rate then my mortgage currently is (although this will also be going up when I have to renew my rate). It’s unlikely that we’re going to pay these off and will be paying them for most of our working lives, due to the interest. My friend’s daughter has her fees paid for, as she was born in Scotland. When are we going to make it a fair, affordable system for those wanting to continue their education? Why are we expecting people to choose needed professions such as doctors, nurses, teachers etc when it costs so much?

Sorry this is not short, but it is focused on specifics:

Is there going to be financial assistance for businesses who ignored/didn’t realise that converting single sex provision to full-height mixed sex toilet cubicles within a mixed sex wash room was not compliant with legislation? If they had followed British Standards they should be ok but recently many haven’t and are now in a mess.

Older people are particularly at risk of staying at home because of no provision. Is there any way we can have a cross departmental group looking at this essential need for everyone? Crime inc drugs, VAWG, then building regs, fire services, street cleaning, HSE, health, prevention of future deaths, disease control, disability all link to toilet provision and their design. We need to try and design-out crime so need to collate incidents of sexual assaults (and medical incidents) that have been happening in toilets in schools, hospitals, train carriages, clubs, restaurants, supermarkets etc. I am happy to give you all my research and evidence for you to do your own risk assessments on. Public toilet provision has been decimated due to closures from vandalism, and unsocial behaviour eg. sex and drugs.

Businesses with the correct single sex provision and accessible (disabled) facilities shouldn’t have to be made to add another mixed sex toilet room at great cost if that is what is being suggested by the EHRC. If space is restricted it’s even worse because it may be taken from existing safer and healthier single sex designs that have door gaps for cleaning, ventilation, supervision and prevention of misuse.

Each new mixed sex toilet room will be around £15k and they haven’t been risk assessed or an equality impact assessed against the provision they replace. Radar keys were invented because of the problems of mixed sex, therefore private places, in public areas. If any more provision can be suggested could it be that non-ambulant people have more visible provision within single sex spaces too? That would free up using mixed sex provision for those with opposite sex carers and those who need total privacy and all the facilities for medical conditions and any other reasons.

Secondary schools are also in a mess as the DfE effectively signed off many private, mixed sex toilet cubicle designs in mixed sex environments that aren’t fit for purpose. They are discriminatory towards those pupils with medical conditions (such as epilepsy, diabetes, pots, heart conditions) and girls. Do they get financial help to put it right too?

I am hoping the complex, costly situations above are what you and your colleagues are already looking at regarding single sex spaces, and that’s why it’s taking so long. The healthiest and safest toilet design is happily the one that’s cheapest to install and maintain ie single sex.

@Duvetdayneeded Rachel Reeves is qualified to do the job.

Can we leave off with the misogyny.

Nothing to her with her being female, just incompetent.

Why is there no recognition of people
who have paid into the system
when it comes to JSA. Why is it such a miserly amount for people who have paid in for decades and who then lose their jobs.

Hi Rachel. It's estimated that around 2.3 million people in the UK use cannabis each year, including a significant number of young people. And yet it's entirely unregulated. So no control over strength or contamination, no age verification and all profits flow to criminal networks. Meanwhile, US states that have legalised have generated roughly $25bn in tax receipts, while introducing regulated supply and age controls. In a world where the public finances are so tight - why are we choosing to leave a multi-billion-pound market in the hands of the black market - rather than regulating it, taxing it, and making it safer? Is the barrier economic, political, or something else?

No she isn’t.

Given the Supreme Court’s decision, which was perfectly clear, and impending financial crises such as the fact that benefit spending now outweighs tax revenues, why is so much taxpayers’ money still being handed out to the NHS to squander on lost causes such as fighting the Darlington Nurses (£600K+) squandered by the NHS on the Darlington Nurses case? Or the £300K + on the Sandy Peggie case?

@Julen7

Precisely what qualifications would you be expecting to see beyond a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University and an MSc in Economics?

George Osborne has a BA in modern history.

Jeremy Hunt also has a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford.

Kwasi Kwartend a PhD in economic history.

Nadhim Zahawi has a BSc in Chemical Engineering.

Rishi Sunak also has a BA Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University.

Sajid Javid has a degree in Economics and Politics.

Philip Hammond also has a IN BA Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford.

Again, leave off with the misogyny.

Edited to add: @Duvetdayneeded you said “When are you going to step down and have a qualified person do the job?” - if, in your opinion, you think that she cannot do the job, that’s a whole other matter. But what you said was that she wasn’t qualified to do the job. For seemingly no other reason than glaring misogyny because she is clearly as, if not more, qualified than her counterparts in government over the last decade.

Benefit spending doesn’t outweigh tax revenue. It’s 23% of the total tax take and half of it is state pensions.

I’m not talking about her degrees, Her experience (or lack of) in employment and her track record as chancellor has left many to believe she is hopelessly out of her depth.

What is misogynistic about stating that she just isn’t very good?

Not according to a number of reports:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/04/04/labour-welfare-bill-income-tax-revenue/
In 2026, UK welfare spending is projected to reach approximately £333 billion, exceeding the estimated £331 billion raised in income tax.

I don’t agree with everything she has done but she is at least equally if not more qualified than any of her recent predecessors - bar perhaps Rishi and Gordon B.
She is not a customer service operator-
she has a top degree in economics from one of the world’s best universities. She has worked for the Bank of E and as an economic secretary at the Consulate in New York.
These may have been relatively junior roles because she was young - but they are highly prestigious jobs and absolutely not given to numpties.

Total tax take is £858.6 billion. Total benefit expenditure approximately £334 billion in 2025–26. Don’t believe everything you read in The Telegraph.

Isn’t the point it has exceeded income tax take - as opposed to other forms of taxation

Or try to understand what you are reading - it's about welfare bill exceeding income tax receipts, not total tax.

Income tax receipts constitute about 27% of total tax receipts in UK.

OK. She is qualified on paper to do the job but (at least to date) she cannot do the job, is that better?

Whatever. That’s not my actual question anyway: why is taxpayers’ money being wasted defending cases where the NHS has clearly not obeyed the law according to the Supreme Court’s judgment?

My question is about social care: what is your plan for fixing and future proofing the social care system?

When my parents both acquired life limiting illnesses in their early 60s, they had £1m in equity in their property and teachers’ pensions to rely on. This, as well as the unpaid care work my husband and I did (we both had to drop our hours to part time to manage) just about got them through to their deaths, 12 and 14 years later. At the end they were paying over £20k a month to live in care homes and receive inadequate care that needed to be supplemented by the next generation.

While I’m glad the money lasted their lifetimes, I know that it has all been paid to private care companies with no interest in investing for the future. Carers are mostly underpaid immigrants, living in an increasingly hostile social context, which is not only a horrible situation for carers to have to work in, but also adds to the insecurity and short termism of the care system as a whole. People like my husband and I will never build up the same kind of equity or pensions as our parents could, because of the hit the failing care system took on our careers. If we were to be diagnosed with the same illnesses as they were, I cannot see how we would be able to live.

The care system is unfair, expensive and ineffective right now, and is heading towards disaster. What is your plan?