Martin Lewis skewers high Tory stay on air for Sunak’s essential lie throughout debate

Martin Lewis confronted a Tory minister on air and asked if she’d apologise after Rishi Sunak was caught out making misleading tax claims.

The money saving expert challenged Energy and Net Zero Secretary Claire Coutinho after Mr Sunak tried to pass off Conservative research as independent. The PM is under fire after brazenly declaring that Keir Starmer would increase taxes by £2,000 for the average working household to fund his spending plans. Labour has dismissed it as “pure lies” and accused the Conservatives of cooking up dodgy figures.

During the ITV General Election debate, watched by over 4.8million people, Mr Sunak claimed Treasury civil servants had calculated the cost of Labour plans. He claimed these would create a £38.5billion black hole that would have to be have to be paid for by raising taxes. But a newly-surfaced letter shows the top official at the department warned ministers not to say it was the work of neutral officials, as this wasn’t true.

Labour said it has no intention of raising taxes in this way and accused the Tories of miscalculating the cost of its plans. Referencing the letter, by Treasury Permanent Secretary James Bowler, Mr Lewis asked Ms Coutinho: “That is a slap down from the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury.

“You’ve been on television elsewhere this morning defending this and saying that these are civil service numbers and that they were not by political advisers. Is it time to apologise?”

But Ms Coutinho doubled down, saying: “No, absolutely not.” She went on to claim that costings had been done by Government departments, branding them “official costings”. She also said Mr Starmer hadn’t denied the PM’s tax claims – despite the fact he repeatedly did so during the debate, branding it “garbage”.

Mr Lewis was having none of it, saying: “The figure that was being used should not have been used and said it came from the civil service. That’s what the letter says. I’ve got it here in black and white.”

During the interview on Good Morning Britain, host Susanna Reid said she was “mystified” about where the £2,000 figure came from. Mr Sunak said in the debate: “Independent Treasury officials have costed Labour’s policies and they amount to a £2,000 tax rise for every working family.”

But Mr Bowler said he had warned ministers not to present the findings as produced by the civil service. Labour’s Shadow Paymaster General, Jonathan Ashworth, branded the PM “no different than Boris Johnson”.

He said: “Rishi Sunak was resorting to lying because he is desperate and what do desperate people do when in a corner? They lie. We saw it with Boris Johnson over parties in Downing Street in lockdown, and Rishi Sunak has exposed himself as no better and no different than Boris Johnson with his lies.”

Ministers asked officials to estimate the costs of some of the policies, but are accused of giving them false assumptions to bump up the figures. For example, the costing of Labour’s mental health plan wrongly assumes a youth worker would be stationed in every A&E department across the country. And Treasury officials admit their estimate on bus reform “has been done at pace with limited data and, therefore, the uncertainty and risk of error is high”.

In a letter on Monday, Treasury permanent secretary James Bowler said ministers should not say they came up with the £38billion figure when it “includes costs beyond those provided by the Civil Service”. Chris Morris of fact-checking charity Full Fact said: “It’s clearly unacceptable to present your own analysis as the conclusions of independent civil servants when it’s not. Public trust in politics is hanging by a thread and a high-profile falsehood will turn even more people away from the democratic process. We want to see this corrected as soon as possible.”