Liverpool (AFP) - Britain’s governing Labour party sought Monday to strike a more upbeat note about the country’s economic future against a backlash at proposed cuts to welfare payments and a row over top ministers receiving gifts.

In a keynote speech to the centre-left party’s annual conference in Liverpool, which was often interrupted by hecklers, finance minister Rachel Reeves insisted on a need for “iron discipline” on the economy amid ballooning state debt.

Reeves, the first woman named Britain’s chancellor of the Exchequer, said her first budget next month would open the way for business investment that would provide the country with “lasting growth”.

She reiterated Labour’s pre-election pledge that workers would not face tax increases on their salaries, while paving the way for other tax hikes, according to analysts.

Reeves also pledged “no return to austerity” as seen under Conservative rule, a mantra repeated by several Labour figures as the party held its first annual gathering in power since 2009.

Casting a shadow over the conference was a row about gifts that dominated the buildup and continued fallout over the controversial axing of a fuel benefit for millions of pensioners, which has triggered anger from unions.

The government also suffered a blow near the end of Reeves’s speech as news came through that nurses had rejected the government’s latest pay deal.

The announcement came after the government agreed last week on pay rises for doctors and train drivers.

“We must deal with the Tory legacy, and that means tough decisions, but I won’t let that dim our ambition for Britain,” Reeves told a packed hall.

She said the tax and spending plans to be announced in her budget plan next month would show “real ambition… a budget to rebuild Britain”.

Reeves also confirmed the appointment of a new Covid corruption commissioner to try to claw back billions of pounds in taxpayers’ money allegedly wasted on contracts signed during the pandemic.

- Gifts row -

Britain’s economy is faltering, with recent official data showing government debt at the highest level in more than 60 years.

Economic growth has stalled and the annual inflation rate remains above the Bank of England’s target, limiting the scope for interest rates cuts that could boost consumer spending.

The Labour conference should have been an opportunity for the party to toast its landslide election victory in July over the Conservatives after 14 years out of power.

But in recent days been Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his top team have been forced to confront accusations of hypocrisy for accepting expensive gifts even while asking voters to tighten their belts.

All of the gifts have been declared and none fall foul of parliamentary rules.

But records show that Starmer accepted more than £100,000 ($132,000) in gifts and hospitality since December 2019, more than any other lawmaker.

It also emerged that Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner accepted the loan of a New York apartment for a holiday.

Since Friday, it has also emerged that Reeves, who has angered trade unions and fellow Labour MPs by announcing plans to axe a winter fuel payment for many pensioners, accepted around £7,500 worth of clothing.

Trade Minister Douglas Alexander conceded that reports about free gifts were “not the headlines we would have chosen” for its first party conference since winning power.

Reeves and the Labour party have defended the abolition of the £300 payment to 10 million pensioners to help them heat their homes, citing a need to fill a “£22 billion black hole” left by the Conservatives.

Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite trade union, has called it “cruel”, and a motion for the cut to be abandoned is to be voted on at the conference on Wednesday.

“I can’t believe the first thing they’ve done, they hadn’t really thought through,” Labour party activist Neil Mallett, 70, told AFP.

Two men were ejected from the conference after heckling Reeves about pollution and arms exports to Israel.