Chancellor Rachel Reeves has been accused of refusing to “face up to her own failures” by “jetting off to Beijing” during a week of market turmoil.
Shadow chancellor Mel Stride accused the chancellor of avoiding difficult questions while the “government was losing control of the economy” while Ms Reeves visited China over the past week with a delegation including the governor of the Bank of England and the heads of HSBC, Standard Chartered and Schroders.
On Monday, both long-term 30-year and 10-year government borrowing costs rose, with the 30-year effective interest rate (the gilt yield) reaching a new high of 5.47% – a rate not seen since mid-1998.
The pound also hit a 14-month low, prompting questions over the chancellor’s future.
Politics latest: Chancellor defends her records
She received a slight reprieve on Tuesday morning as the pound recovered some loss and ticked up slightly to $1.22, while government borrowing costs dipped slightly.
But the Conservatives used Ms Reeves’s absence over the past week to attack her, with Mr Stride telling the Commons: “While the government was losing control of the economy, where was the chancellor?
“Her trip to China had not even begun when my urgent question was taken in the House last week, she was still in the country, but she sent the chief secretary rather than face up to her own failures.
“So can I ask (Rachel Reeves) why she chose not to respond herself? The chancellor, of course, ducked the difficult questions by jetting off to Beijing.
“I believe that in Labour circles, they are calling it the Peking duck.”