Responding, MP, Chief Secretary to the
Treasury, said:
“The Shadow Chancellor has today admitted Labour would borrow
billions more and hike up taxes to record levels.
“The costs would rack up and up - putting economic growth at risk
and hitting ordinary working people in the pocket.
“Only the Conservatives can build a country that is fit for the
future.”
ENDS
Notes to Editors
-
· Labour’s
tax hikes would hit ordinary working families with lower wages
and higher prices. ‘What Labour actually want you
to hear is that the spending increases they promise… would be
funded by tax increases solely affecting the rich and companies.
This would not happen … In the longer term, much of the cost [of
tax rises] is likely to be passed to workers through lower wages
or consumers through higher prices’ (Carl
Emmerson, IFS, 26 May 2017).
-
· This
would be the biggest tax increase in peacetime
history. ‘Labour by contrast is proposing
very big increases in tax, a bigger increase in spending and, as
a result, borrowing continuing around its current share of
national income. They would increase spending to its
highest sustained level in more than 30 years and taxes to their
highest ever peacetime level … their proposed plan for
paying for this expansion in state activity would not
work. They would not raise as much money as they claim
even in the short run, let alone the long run. And there is no
way that tens of billions of pounds of tax rises would affect
only a small group at the very top as their rhetoric
suggests. If they want the advantages of a bigger state
they should be willing to candidly set out the consequences –
higher taxation affecting broad segments of the population’
(IFS, 26 May 2017, link).
-
· At
Labour’s conference, admitted that there might
be a run on the pound and capital flight as a result of a
Corbyn government. McDonnell revealed
supporters had been doing “war game-type scenario-planning”,
including “a run on the pound”, capital
flight and other possibilities it would have to deal
with after being elected (Huffington post, 26
September 2017, link).
Transcript of on the Today programme –
16/11/2017
Studio: Yes wait, I want to get to that in just a second so I
just want to get a sense of these, of these numbers now because
Jon Ashworth said the other day in the, in the Commons called for
the chancellor to allocate an extra £6bn a year. Now you've
talked about spending on schools you're going to talk today about
local authority funding as well as lifting, provide new funding
to lift the public sector pay cap. Now if you as as a total of
all of that in terms of day to day spending where do you get to?
: Right, on the expenditure
plans that we've put out in our grey book for the general
election and calling for those priorities for next week, we were
looking about £17bn just above.
Studio: £17bn?
: £17bn.
Studio: In increased spending?
: That's right.
Studio: On day to day spending?
: On day to say spending, on
health and local government social care etc.
Studio: So if you are sticking to what you said in your
manifesto, then that has to come from taxes?
: Yes and we looked then, we
looked at how we could raise that and we said one way is that the
government has got to stop giving tax cuts to the corporations
and the rich and in that way if we can reverse them, at the
moment the calculation now is that on corporation tax and capital
gains tax and some of these tax cuts to the rich we're talking
about £76bn being given away over the next well during the life
of this Parliament. I don't think that's acceptable when our
public services are in such a crisis.
