Rachel Reeves has edited her online CV after admitting she was not an economist during her time at the Bank of Scotland.
The Chancellor deleted ‘economist’ from her LinkedIn profile work experience and changed it to ‘retail banking’ during her time at the bank in 2006-9.
The move prompted the Tories to accuse her of ‘deception’ and brand her ‘economical with the truth’.
In her Mansion House speech on Thursday evening, Ms Reeves told guests: ‘Before entering politics, I worked as an economist at the Bank of England. And then in financial services.’
Her LinkedIn CV – which had previously said that she was an economist at the Bank of Scotland has now been updated to say she was in ‘Retail Banking’, the Guido Fawkes political website noted.
It previously reported that she worked in a support department at the Bank of Scotland which managed administration, IT and planning matters.
A Labour source said: ‘Ms Reeves worked in retail banking covering various areas drawing on her background as an economist. Her LinkedIn has been updated to reflect that.’
The source said she had held several different roles at the bank but would not clarify her job title.
A Tory party source told the Mail: ‘It seems Rachel Reeves employment history claims are about as accurate as her promises not to raise taxes on working people – based on deception and increasingly proved false.’
Shadow justice minister Robert Jenrick said: ‘Reeves said she was an economist. Turns out she’s just economical with the truth.’
Ms Reeves began her career at the Bank of England and worked there between 2000 and 2006, including a secondment in Washington.
She then moved to Leeds to work for the retail arm of Halifax Bank of Scotland before becoming an MP.
She became known as the ‘copy and paste chancellor’ after she apologised for plagiarising other authors in a book she claimed to have written.
Ms Reeves made much of her experience as an economist ahead of the Budget, saying she would not play fast and loose with public money.
This comes after Ms Reeves was yesterday warned that she was damaging the UK economy as growth slowed to a crawl.
The Chancellor was blamed for the slowdown during her first three months in office, with critics saying she had talked down the economy, leaving businesses and households hesitant to spend.
Business groups lined up to say she was only making things worse after her shock £25 billion tax raid on employer National Insurance contributions (NICs) in the Budget.
The British Chambers of Commerce said many firms ‘will not be able to stomach’ the higher costs, while analysts at Deutsche Bank said the move could cost 100,000 jobs.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics yesterday showed gross domestic product grew by just 0.1 per cent in the third quarter from July to September. That was worse than economists predicted, leading Ms Reeves to admit she was ‘not satisfied’.
Sir Keir Starmer said the figures were ‘not good enough’.
Growth had enjoyed a strong start to the year yet, upon taking power, the Chancellor repeatedly insisted that the economic inheritance from the Tories was the worst for any new government since the Second World War.
That claim was widely derided in the City – and backfired on Ms Reeves as evidence mounted that her doom-and-gloom comments were damaging business and consumer confidence.
Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride told Times Radio: ‘I’m afraid they’re reaping to a degree what they’ve done in terms of talking the economy down.
‘And of course now what they’ve done is follow it up with a Budget that has indeed ramped up taxes, particularly taxes that are going to bear down on growth.’
Ms Reeves – who visited an energy firm in Didcot yesterday – said: ‘Improving economic growth is at the heart of everything I am seeking to achieve, which is why I am not satisfied with these numbers.’
In an interview with Channel 4 News, she responded to a suggestion that the economy was ‘in a hole’ and she should ‘stop digging’ with her tax on jobs by seeking to blame the Conservatives. She said she had ‘wiped the slate clean and drawn a line under the economic mismanagement and incompetence of the previous government’ and put the economy in a position to grow.
The disappointing ONS figures came as a blow to Ms Reeves the day after a keynote speech in which she outlined a plan to boost growth by creating n and Canadian-style pension ‘megafunds’ to unlock £80 billion for investment.
The changes form part of Labour’s ambition to lift growth to the strongest level among all of the G7 advanced economies.
But Britain is now further away from that ambition than when the party took office in July.
In the first half of this year, under the Tories, the UK economy was the strongest in the G7.