Ed will raise taxes

Chancellor’s warning as it’s shown your tax went up £1,900 under Labour

TAXES on earnings went up by nearly £1,900 under 13 years of Labour, figures revealed today – as George Osborne warned ‘they’ll do it all again’.

The Chancellor said Labour had ‘form’ on jacking up income tax and National Insurance and insisted Ed Balls and Ed Miliband would do the same if given the chance after May 7.

‘Ed Miliband and Ed Balls have done it all before – and they would do it all over again,’ he said.

Today, as he begins a tour of all four nations of the UK, David Cameron will say there is just one month to save Britain from the ‘disaster’ of a Miliband government.

Yesterday the Prime Minister stepped up his attack on tax by insisting Labour was planning to drag nearly one million more people into the 40p tax rate.

And in a pointed attack on his coalition partners, he dismissed the Lib Dems as being among the ‘minor parties’ making ‘more and more strange claims’.

‘They’ve done it

all before’

Mr Cameron said voters would pay a ‘heavy price’ for a Labour government which would be ‘looking in your payslip’ for tax. He also condemned Labour’s plans to abolish the married couples tax allowance, which came into effect yesterday.

Speaking in Leeds, Ed Balls said the tax break – worth £200 a year to couples who have tied the knot – was ‘perverse’.

Shadow Chancellor Mr Balls also repeated his claim – denied outright by the Tories – that they would raise VAT.

He said a Tory government would mean ‘millions paying more while millionaires pay less’ as he accused the party of planning to cut the top rate of income tax for those earning over £150,000.

Meanwhile a major spat erupted between the Tories and Lib Dems, as Danny Alexander was accused of inventing an extraordinary claim about a senior Tory.

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury claimed that during negotiations for the 2012 Budget, a Tory minister told him: ‘You take care of the workers and we’ll take care of the bosses’. He refused to say who it was. Mr Alexander made the comments, in the Independent newspaper, as his party attempted to claw back credit for cutting the personal rate of income tax from the Tories.

But Culture Secretary Sajid Javid told the BBC’s World at One the claim was ‘complete rubbish’. He added: ‘The reason why he wouldn’t actually tell you who he thinks said it, is he knows that no one said it.’

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg accused Mr Osborne of being a ‘very dangerous man’ because of his cuts plans. Mr Cameron dismissed the remarks, saying: ‘You are going to hear minor parties just making more and more strange claims to say “look at me, look at what I’m saying”.’

Mr Osborne released figures, by the independent House of Commons Library, showing the extent of tax and National Insurance rises under Labour from 1997 to 2010. Combined taxes on income went up by an average of £1,895 across all households, he said. They rose among every income group, with those earning £15,500 hit the hardest.

He repeated his claim Labour is planning a £3,000 tax bombshell, saying: ‘We’re publishing figures that show Labour’s got form on tax.’

Mr Cameron, who will visit England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in a single day today, will say there is ‘one month to save our economy from the disaster of an Ed Miliband government’.

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