SHADOW health secretary Wes Streeting has blamed former prime minister Liz Truss’s “disastrous” mini-Budget as part of the reason why Labour scrapped their green investment pledge.

Following months of speculation, it has now been confirmed Labour have cut their plans by half, in one of the biggest U-turns of Keir Starmer’s leadership.

It’s a move which has prompted widespread criticism, with SNP Westminster Stephen Flynn and a former adviser to Tony Blair among those to take aim at the Labour leader.

During his appearance on Question Time, Streeting claimed that people should place “even greater trust” in his party following the U-turn because they were “being honest about the fact we can’t afford to do all the things we would like to do”.

He added: “It is no secret that since we made that £28 billion announcement in 2021, the economy has changed for the worse, the cost of borrowing has quadrupled and that is in no small part thanks to the disastrous mini-budget, which has not only trashed the nation’s finances, it means that families across the country are having to make even harder choices than we are as politicians.

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“Like the parents who are having to put essentials back on the shelves in the supermarket because they can’t afford them because the prices have gone up.

“Like the families who are having to tell their kids that this summer there won’t be the holiday abroad because the mortgage has gone up, because the rent has gone up.

“So we make no apology actually for the fact we’ve had to take a long, hard look at the challenges facing the country, the promises we would like to make and kick the tyres on every single one of them to ask those two questions – can we deliver it, can the country afford it?

“If the answer to either of those questions is no, it ain’t going in our manifesto. The alternative is where we’ve been before, frankly where we’ve been over the last 14 years which is promises made in elections subsequently broken.

“And if there’s one thing that’s in even shorter supply than money at the moment, it’s trust in politics and politicians.”

Labour’s U-turn comes despite the fact that Angela Rayner (below) told journalists during a visit to Scotland that the plan would not be ditched.

The National: Angela Rayner speaking at the Labour Party Women's Conference in Liverpool

Streeting added that his party wanted to be able to look voters in the eye and “say every pledge we’ve made is a pledge that we can deliver and a pledge the country can afford”.

“I’d rather get a hard time now than let you down after the election,” he said.