Osborne: Labour’s £ 30billion extra debt
LABOUR would saddle Britain with a “never- ending defi cit” and interest alone on borrowing would cost taxpayers £ 3billion over two years, George Osborne said yesterday.
The Chancellor said Labour would have to borrow an extra £ 30 billion a year to make its plans add up.
By contrast, the Conservatives aimed for an absolute budget surplus by 2020 to bear down on debt and ensure the country was better prepared for any future economic “storms”.
Mr Osborne, speaking in London, claimed: “The Labour Party don’t want to do that. They only talk about balancing the current, day- today, spending while continuing to borrow to pay for capital spending.
“What they don’t tell you is that means a permanent, never- ending budget defi cit. Year after year, spending more than we raise.
“Assuming Labour don’t want to spend less than us on capital investment, that means borrowing at least £ 30billion a year and rising.
“A £ 30billion budget defi cit forever into the future.”
That would mean £ 3billion extra in debt interest over two years from 2018 – diverting cash that could otherwise have gone into public services, infrastructure or cutting income tax for ordinary families.
Mr Osborne also repeated Tory claims that Labour plans would cost working families an average of more than £ 3,000 in extra tax by 2020, despite Ed Miliband yesterday calling the fi gure “wrong, wrong, wrong”.
Mr Osborne was pressed to “rule out” further limiting Child Benefi t by rolling it into Universal Credit – thus denying it to more than four million families not on benefi t. He declined to use those exact words but insisted: “If we wanted to do it we would have done it when we created Universal Credit.”
A total of 150 business leaders have now signed a letter backing the Government’s economic policies, after around 30 more added their names. The open letter, fi rst published last week, backs the Conservatives’ Corporation Tax cuts, which Labour would partially reverse.
New signatories include former Labour backer Simon Woodroffe, founder of the Yo! Sushi restaurant chain. He took part in a 2014 Labour political broadcast but this year said the party was hostile to business.