British finance minister apologizes for raising taxes while campaigning for budget without raising taxes

The British finance minister Jeremy Reeves has apologised to the British people for announcing 40 billion pounds of tax rises, in a blow to her election manifesto which had said there would be no tax rises.

In an interview with Sky News on Sunday, Reeves apologized for the comments she made in June: "I was wrong," Bloomberg reported.

She explained that she had underestimated the scale of the UK's budget gap. "About a month after I said that [no tax increases], senior people in the Treasury took me into a room and laid out the huge black holes in the public finances."

Reeves also pledged to avoid announcing another similar spending package before the next election. "There's no need to come up with a budget like that. We don't need to do that anymore."

Reeves said before the election that there were no plans to raise any taxes beyond those already in place.

However, her first budget on October 30, announcing £40bn of tax increases, caused widespread debate. Some of the measures in the budget, such as changes to personal income tax and inheritance tax, are also causing concern. Labour's election manifesto did not specifically mention these tax increases.

This is likely to be Britain's biggest tax increase and borrowing surge in decades. Following the announcement, government bonds sold off for two days before stabilising on Friday.