Liz Kendall has urged Chancellor John Healey to stay the course on the public finances as he prepares to deliver his first Budget on 28 October.
The former Work and Pensions Secretary said the government could not tax and borrow its way out of the country's economic problems. She argued that maintaining fiscal discipline was necessary to avoid a cycle of higher taxation and higher borrowing.
Kendall said the Chancellor had solid foundations on which to build, pointing to the International Monetary Fund's upgrade to its UK growth forecast and its assessment of the public finances.
She also called for a clearer account of the country's economic future. Her intervention places growth, rather than a change of fiscal direction, at the centre of her advice to Healey before the Budget.
Kendall linked that argument to the government's reindustrialisation agenda and the goal of spreading growth across the country. She said artificial intelligence should be treated as the enabling technology for a new industrial economy.
The Leicester West MP described AI as the steel of the future, arguing that it could connect technological change with investment and industrial renewal.
Her comments add a Labour backbench voice to the debate over the balance Healey must strike between spending pressures, tax decisions and measures intended to raise long-term growth.
