Government ‘committed to cutting taxes’ – Truss
THE Foreign Secretary has insisted the UK Government is “committed to cutting taxes” after the Prime Minister and Chancellor doubled down on plans to raise National Insurance.
Liz Truss said “taxes are never popular”, but significant amounts of money spent dealing with the Covid crisis “need to be paid back”.
Labour urged the Government to “rethink” the National Insurance rise, with shadow levelling-up secretary Lisa Nandy warning “it’s just simply not possible for a lot of people to survive” if their tax burden grows.
The Prime Minister has been facing pressure from within his own party to scrap or at least delay the increase to win back support as he awaits the findings of Whitehall and police inquiries into claims of lockdownbusting parties held in Downing Street.
No.10 had still not received a copy of the highly anticipated Sue Gray report yesterday morning.
Concerns about the Prime Minister’s decision to press on with the 1.25 percentage point rise, designed to tackle the Covid-induced NHS backlog and reform social care, were also raised by senior Tory MP Robert Halfon.
Speaking to Sky News’ Trevor Phillips On Sunday programme, he said the Government should “go back to the drawing board” and look at different ways to find money that is needed for the health service.
But Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said delaying or scrapping the National Insurance increase could throw up an issue of credibility with the public.
He argued that the tax hike is about trying to cover the “long-term evergrowing costs” of the NHS.
Mr Johnson told Times Radio: “Even if we hadn’t had a pandemic and even if the Government wasn’t doing anything about social care, they would still have needed a rise of something like this because spending on the NHS is just rising inexorably year on year on year.
“In a way, my view is that the pandemic has given them an excuse to smuggle in the rather big tax rise that they would have had to do in any case.”
Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak put on a united front as they made a firm commitment to go ahead with the controversial National Insurance hike despite concern from some Tory MPs about the cost-of-living crisis.
Writing in The Sunday Times, the pair insisted that it is right to follow through on the “progressive” policy.
Ms Truss told Sky News that the Government is “committed to cutting taxes”.
She acknowledged on the BBC’s Sunday Morning programme that “taxes are never popular”, but said “significant” amounts of money spent coping with the pandemic must be repaid.
“As soon as possible, we want to be in a position to lower our tax rates, we want to drive economic growth, because ultimately that is what will make our country successful,” she said. “But we do face a short-term issue, which is that we have spent significant amounts of money dealing with the Covid crisis that does need to be paid back.”
Ms Nandy urged the Government to “rethink” the National Insurance rise, adding that Labour would “come forward with a much fairer taxation system”.