Rachel Reeves caught joking about government debt in ‘hot mic’ moment

Rachel Reeves was caught joking about government debt in a “hot mic” moment during a visit with Keir Starmer to a Jaguar Land Rover plant in the West Midlands on Monday (7 April).

Responding to a comment from Jaguar Land Rover CEO Adrian Mardell about how the company had cleared £5bn worth of debt in 31 months, the chancellor said, “That’d be nice.”

The total amount owed by the government is called national debt. The UK’s national debt currently stands at around £2.8 trillion.

The national debt amount is similar in size to the value of all the goods and services produced in the UK in a year, known as the gross domestic product (GDP).