Labour: Truss calls for £30bn unfunded tax cuts as UK mortgage rates soar versus other European countries
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Former Tory Prime Minister Liz Truss called for over £30 billion of
unfunded tax cuts in a speech delivered at the Institute for
Government this morning. Liz Truss called on her old
Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, to: Refuse to implement the OECD global
minimum rate of corporate taxation Cut corporation tax from 25% to
19% Cancel off-payroll working rules reform Introduce VAT-free
tourist shopping Delay the UK’s net zero commitments Abolish
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Former Tory Prime Minister Liz Truss called for over £30 billion of unfunded tax cuts in a speech delivered at the Institute for Government this morning.
Liz
Truss called on her old Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, to:
Of these measures, the ones that can be costed would total more than £30 billion. Rishi Sunak and his Chancellor Jeremy Hunt (who he inherited from Truss) are yet to rule out these commitments. Rishi Sunak has previously praised Liz Truss’s record, saying “I’d like to pay tribute to Liz Truss for her dedicated public service. She has led with dignity and grace”. He also said he “admired her restlessness to create change”. Truss said she was having a “more relaxing September than last year”. This September, over 140,000 people will come off fixed rate mortgages and will pay an average of £220 a month more as a result of Truss’s mini-budget. This puts additional annual mortgage payments for British homeowners at £830 higher than Ireland, £880 higher than Germany, and £1,670 higher than France. The mini-budget contained £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts. Darren Jones MP, Labour’s Shadow Chief Secretary, said: “Liz Truss can laugh about having had a ‘more relaxing September than last year’, but people suffering with higher mortgages, and families unable to pay their bills, won’t find it funny. “Rishi Sunak wants people to forget about the Tories’ record on the economy. The least the Prime Minister can do is reassure the public by apologising for his party crashing the economy and explain what lessons he has learnt from the failures of his Tory predecessors.” Ends Notes Cost of policies Liz Truss called for in her IfG speech:
Mortgage comparisons 140,396 people are coming off of fixed rate mortgages this September across the UK: https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/financial-conduct-authority-data-on-mortgage-type-and-fixed-rate-end-date-by-region--as-at-end-2022-. The average monthly mortgage payment is up by £220: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/financial-stability-report/2023/july-2023. The latest Bank of England data on effective interest rates shows that interest rates on new mortgages in July 2023 were on average 4.66%: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/visual-summaries/effective-interest-rates Data published by the European Central Bank shows equivalent interest rates on new mortgages for a range of European countries: This shows that in July 2023 rates in Germany were 4.02% on average, in the Netherlands 4.08%, in Ireland 4.06%, in Belgium 3.79% and in France just 3.43%. For a £200,000 loan paid back over 25 years, the table below shows how much extra UK mortgage payments would be compared to each of these countries. It is likely these gaps have widened even more in subsequent months, as interest rates here in the UK have spiked again more recently.
Rishi Sunak praising Liz Truss’s
record
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