PM’s vision of a brighter future
Rishi promises more tax cuts and vows to deliver ‘long-term change’
RISHI Sunak yesterday vowed that his plan for Britain will mean a brighter future for the nation’s children as he promises that taxes will come down further.
Writing in The Daily Mail, the Prime Minister said he is ‘starting to deliver the long- term change that our country needs’ – but said the job is now to stick to his plan.
He pledged to cut taxes ‘if we continue to control spending and control welfare’ while making the ‘right decisions for the long term’.
Mr Sunak said that this time last year the notion he could cut taxes would have been ‘fanciful’, yet at the weekend the Tories implemented a 2p cut in employees’ national insurance.
Yesterday, he spoke about the need to create ‘fairness’ with tax cuts paid for by trimming the benefits budget through reforms. Currently the proposed budget without any cuts for the Department of Work and Pensions stands at £279.3bn, including £59.8bn on universal credit and £13.3bn on incapacity benefit.
He also heralded efforts to reduce inflation, writing: ‘I committed to halve inflation so we could cut taxes and we’ve done that.
‘If we continue to control spending, control welfare and carry on making the right decisions for the long term, there will be more to come.
‘ We have made undeniable progress in the last year. We are starting to deliver the long-term change that our country needs.
‘The job now is to stick to that plan so that we can give everyone peace of mind that the future is going to be better for their children and to ensure we can have a renewed sense of pride in our country.’
Mr Sunak will today repeat the message on a visit to Lancashire for a ‘PM Connect’ event, where he is expected to warn businesses of the damage a Labour government could inflict.
A No 10 source said: ‘The choice is whether we stick with the plan or go back to square one with the Labour Party; where there is no plan, no progress, where taxes, debt and bortem rowing are increasing, and the country is going in the wrong direction.
‘The PM is determined to continue to confront the difficult challenges [and] not take the easy way out.
In an interview with BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Mr Sunak said he was concerned about the ‘significant rise in the number of people who have been deemed unfit to work’ in recent years. ‘In the last decade that syshasn’t been reformed and you have seen the number of people who are signed- off has tripled,’ Mr Sunak explained.
‘Now do I think our country is three times sicker than it was a decade ago? The answer is no.
‘The system is not working as it was designed to work and now we are bringing forward reforms that will mean that we look at the eligibility for who is signed-off sick.
‘That won’t affect all those on existing benefits. It will come in over time on people who are newly presenting to the welfare system.’
He said the reforms to benefits were ‘about fairness’ and ‘about making sure that everybody who can work does work’.
‘And for everyone who is working hard, we reward that hard work with tax cuts, that is a Conservative approach, it is one that I think is right for our country,’ he added.
Mr Sunak’s comments come as Parliament returns after a two-week Christmas recess, and ahead of months of campaigning for the General Election later this year.
‘Renewed sense of pride’