Sir Keir Starmer has denied that his Budget hiked taxes by tens of billions of pounds to pay for the soaring benefits bill.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch denounced the Budget – which raised £26billion in taxes – as a “Budget for Benefits Street paid for by working people” because it was alongside billions of pounds being added to the welfare bill.

Asked by GB News at a community centre in Rugby how it can be right that he was “raising taxes and giving the money from working people to those on benefits”, the PM replied: “No, it’s going to our NHS, it’s going to our schools and it’s going on cost of living measures.”

He added: “I won’t apologise for the fact that we are also lifting 500,000 children out of poverty.

“I don’t want to live in a country where children pay the price in poverty, and three quarters of the families in which children are living in poverty are working families. They’re the working poor.

“The other thing I’d say, because we’re in the hospital yesterday, is if you go to the NHS and ask them, they will say there’s a direct link between child poverty and children coming into hospitals.

“So we take the pressure off the NHS. So I’m not going to apologise for taking children out of poverty. It’s desperately needed.”

Addressing concerns from GB News that they are worse off after the Budget, he added: “We have asked everybody to make a contribution to the necessary decisions and the fair decisions for our country.

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“What I can say to your viewers is that money is going to protect our NHS, which will be a huge concern of theirs, to make sure that when they and their families need it – I hope they don’t over Christmas – but when they do that it is protected for them.

“It’s going into our schools to make sure every child can go as far as their talent will take.

“I know for your viewers that will be really important, but also it’s going into the measures that we’re taking to drive down the cost of living.

“We’ve frozen rail fares, frozen prescription charges.

“And now, yesterday we announced £150 on average of all energy bills right across the country.

“For many of your viewers, that will be welcome news, because it’s one of the bills they worry most about.

“If they’re amongst the six million of the poorest families, that’s on top of the £150 that we’ve already taken off.

“So they’re the principles behind the decisions that we took.”