Appearing on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Reeves was asked whether there was any chance she would rethink the National Insurance rise for employers.
“I’m not immune to their criticism,” she said, “but we’ve got to raise the money to put our public finances on a firm footing”.
From next April, employers will have to pay NI at 15% on salaries above £5,000, instead of 13.8% on salaries above £9,100 currently.
The Institute of General Practice Management, which represents GP practice managers, has estimated the rise will put up the tax bill of the average surgery by around £20,000 a year.
Reeves told the programme raising employer NI had not been on the party’s agenda before the general election.
Asked if she had been wrong to say during the election that there would not be any extra taxes if Labour won, she replied: “What I was wrong about was the mess that the previous government had left for us,” citing the £22bn black hole that Labour say the Tory party left them with.
Earlier in an interview with Sky News, Reeves had said “I was wrong on June 11, I didn’t know everything” when she said during the election that higher taxes would not be needed.
Also on Laura Kuenssberg, Badenoch said the Conservatives would be thinking about the economy “in a different way”, which would be “completely the opposite” of what Labour was doing.
She criticised the rise in employers’ NI contributions as being “not coherent” as most of the increase would be passed on through lower wages and higher prices but she did not say whether or not she would reverse it.
However, Badenoch did say she would reverse the VAT hike on private schools, calling it a “tax on aspiration that won’t raise any money”.
