He did address this later, after being asked “do you agree with Theresa May’s assessment yesterday that Liz Truss’ government helped to undermine the public’s confidence in Conservative economic management?”
He replied:
Mistakes were made. And the first thing I did as chancellor was to reverse those mistakes. And I’ve been very open about that. To her credit, after appointing me as chancellor, Liz Truss did not stand in my way at all. And she told me very clearly I needed to do what I had to do. And I did.
Labour government does not want to cut the tax burden, a future Conservative government will do.”
He says:
Our argument is this is about the future growth of the economy, because we can see looking around the world that more lightly taxed economies have more dynamic private sectors, they grow faster, and in the end that is more money for precious public services like the NHS.
Labour policies that show their commitments cost a total of £59bn over the next four years.”Labour government. He says “this is an election year. People won’t just make a judgement about our record, they make a choice about the future.”
He is making a case that jobs, welfare and taxes are a key dividing lines between the two parties, and that a Labour government will be “damaging for every family in the country.”
Name-dropping Angela Rayner, he says she wants to add “70 new burdens” to businesses. He say the Tories have over 14 years “painstakingly built one of the most flexible labour markets in Europe” which Labour plan to turn into “a French style inflexible labour market”.
He says:
Now it may sound good to offer full employment rights from day one and certainly pleases the unions. But if the impact is fewer new jobs, then the impact on young people and families up and down the country will be an unmitigated tragedy.
Hunt moves on to welfare, saying “Labour has said they are against sanctions. That will mean more people on welfare rolls, not less.”
He says “if businesses are going to find the workers they need, without depending on unlimited migration, we need to move people off welfare into work.”
He says “the final area of substantive difference between the parties is tax.”
He says in her recent major talk Rachel Reeves did not mention cutting taxes once.
He says:
They would like to criticise recent tax rises, thinking people don’t know what caused them. The furlough scheme, the energy price guarantee and billions of pounds in cost of living support. But Labour supported those policies, which is why it is playground politics to use those tax rises to distract debate from the biggest divide in British politics today. What happens to the tax burden next?
Labour party of “taking people for fools” when they say that “living standards have fallen this parliament” without mentioning the pandemic or the energy crisis.
He said when he became chancellor in October 2022 “The Bank of England said we faced the longest recession in a century. The OBR said we would see the biggest fall in living standards on record. Families were worried about their future. But what actually happened, inflation has fallen to just 3.2% and is expected to fall further next week.”
Conservatives and Labour over tax. He will warn that taxes will go up under any incoming Labour government, while promising that if the Conservatives were re-elected, they would go down.
He said:
With no plans to pay for their spending pledges, taxes will go up under any future Labour government as sure as night follows day.
And taxes will go down under a Conservative government because we will do the hard work necessary to keep our economy competitive.
Labour has repeatedly accused the Conservatives of presiding over the highest level of taxation for decades. Hunt is expected to insist in the speech that a new Conservative government would reverse tax increases which he said were driven by the pandemic.
six pledges have had their tyres thoroughly kicked by government ministers and the media since he announced them yesterday morning, and we can expect reaction to them to continue to dominate politics today.
Here are your headlines …
In the diary today we are expecting words from the chancellor Jeremy Hunt, and also from Scotland’s first minister John Swinney. The Commons will be debating private members’ bills.
There is also some business in the Lords, but the Scottish parliament, Senedd and Northern Ireland assembly have nothing scheduled. The Post Office Horizon IT inquiry will be hearing from Alisdair Cameron, CFO and former interim chief executive of Post Office Ltd.
It is Martin Belam with you today. I do try to read all of your comments, and chip in if I think I can be helpful, but the best way to attract my attention is via email. Drop me a line at [email protected], and I find it particularly helpful if you flag up typos/errors/omissions, thank you.
Source: theguardian.com
