Rishi Sunak will NOT cut taxes in next week's Spring Statement
Rishi Sunak will NOT cut taxes in next week’s Spring Statement, ministers admit, as Gordon Brown warns Tories will pay the price for National Insurance rise
- Taxes will not be cut in next week’s Spring Statement, ministers have admitted
- Gordon Brown joined calls for the national insurance increase to be cancelled
- The former Labour prime minister warned the Tories will ‘pay a price’ for the rise
Taxes will not be cut in next week’s Spring Statement, ministers admitted yesterday as Gordon Brown joined calls for the national insurance increase to be cancelled.
The former prime minister warned Rishi Sunak the Conservatives are ‘going to pay a price’ for the rise that will hit firms and workers.
As the crisis in Ukraine sends costs spiralling, there are renewed calls for ministers to scrap the increase, remove VAT from household energy bills and reduce fuel duties.
Former prime minister Gordon Brown warned Rishi Sunak (pictured) the Conservatives are ‘going to pay a price’ for the rise that will hit firms and workers.
Gordon Brown (pictured) has joined calls for the national insurance increase to be cancelled
But asked yesterday if the Government is going to cut taxes with the Chancellor’s Spring Statement approaching, Michael Gove said: ‘No.’
Appearing on the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme, the Cabinet minister added: ‘What we have to do at the moment is to provide support in every way possible that is targeted.
‘We have cut taxes by cutting council tax for people who are on the lower bands, we’re doing that deliberately in order to target support at those on lower incomes at a time when we know that they face considerable pressures.
‘But behind your question may be a suggestion that we should do away with the national insurance increase. No, we’re not doing that.
‘We need that national insurance increase in order to make sure that we can fund the NHS and social care to deal with the Covid backlog.’ Employees, employers and the self-employed will all pay 1.25p more in the pound for national insurance (NI) from next month.
The Daily Mail has led a campaign to spike the tax hike, which will see a worker on £20,000 a year pay an extra £130, while someone on £50,000 will pay £505 more.
Mr Brown, the last chancellor to raise NI, said yesterday Mr Sunak was making a mistake. ‘You can’t put up fuel prices, you can’t allow food prices to go up, you can’t raise taxes and cut benefits – you can’t do all these things at the same time,’ he told The Sunday Times.
Martin McTague (pictured), national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, said: ‘The Chancellor has a choice: plough on with damaging tax hikes, or take steps to protect the most fragile and empower small firms to deliver his “culture of enterprise” vision
The former PM argued that Labour ‘spent two years preparing for the national insurance rise’ in 2002. In contrast, Mr Brown said Mr Sunak had ‘sort of dropped the bomb without any preparatory work’ and the Conservatives ‘are going to pay a price for that’.
His remarks came as business leaders and opposition party politicians stepped up demands for a rethink.
Martin McTague, national chairman of the Federation of Small Businesses, said: ‘The Chancellor has a choice: plough on with damaging tax hikes, or take steps to protect the most fragile and empower small firms to deliver his “culture of enterprise” vision.
‘The time to deliver a low-tax, high-investment, dynamic economy is now… The Chancellor cannot control the wholesale price of gas and oil, but he can control tax policy.’
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey used his speech at his party’s spring conference yesterday to call for Mr Sunak to cut VAT from 20 per cent to 17.5 per cent for a year, which he said would save families an average of £600.
He added: ‘It’s time the Chancellor listened and understood how his tax rises are hurting people hard. So, Rishi Sunak: drop your unfair taxes, scrap the NI hike, unfreeze income tax allowances. Do it… next week.’
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