Rishi Sunak threatens to grab Universal Credit money to pay for tax cuts
Rishi Sunak has threatened to grab money from households on Universal Credit to pay for tax cuts.
The PM hinted that pre-election tax minimize giveaways might be made on the again of “difficult decisions to control welfare”. He boasted the Autumn Statement in November delivered “the biggest set of tax cuts in one event since the 1980s” regardless of hundreds of thousands extra being dragged into greater tax brackets.
Mr Sunak informed The Sunday Telegraph: “When I say that I want to keep cutting taxes, that is what we’re going to deliver. We’re going to do that responsibly. That requires difficult decisions on public spending. It requires difficult decisions to control welfare. Those, I believe, are the right things to do for our country. That is what I want to do.
“I’m very clear: I wish to management public spending, I wish to management welfare, which we’re doing. And as a result of we’re doing that, and since we’re being disciplined with borrowing and our debt, we’ll be able to chop taxes.”
The PM said it was his “precedence” to “preserve reducing folks’s taxes” after a 2p cut in national insurance was introduced on Saturday. “There isn’t any approach we are able to do this until we restrain the expansion within the public sector and authorities spending,” he said.
The pledge to offer fresh tax cuts while tightening the reins on public spending appears to be an attempt from Mr Sunak to draw a dividing line with Labour forward of a basic election. The PM claimed “taxes are going up” if Keir Starmer will get into No10. That is regardless of the Labour chief pledging in September that he wouldn’t increase taxes, and Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves final week telling The Daily Mirror: “You won’t see will increase in taxes on working folks below a Labour authorities.”
The PM’s latest comments come after the main rate of national insurance was cut by two percentage points, from 12% to 10%. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said the pre-election cut means families with two earners are nearly £1,000 better off a year.
But Labour said it amounted to a “uncooked deal” as Mr Hunt has kept tax thresholds frozen – a fiscal policy first introduced by Mr Sunak when he was Chancellor during the pandemic. The frozen thresholds will provide an automatic tax rise to millions as their wages increase with inflation while tax bands remain static.
The Prime Minister declined to say what taxation he would like to see reduced or abolished but said he believed that British society should be “one the place… laborious work is rewarded”.
After the autumn statement in November, the Government faced pressure by Tory MPs to go further and cut income tax or inheritance tax. Mr Hunt, in an interview with the BBC on Saturday, called inheritance tax “pernicious” but said he could not say “whether or not it’s going to be reasonably priced to scale back taxes” in 2024.
It was introduced final month that the Budget might be held on March 6. Mr Sunak informed broadcasters on Thursday that his “working assumption” was that he would call an election in the second half of the year, ahead of the January 2025 deadline.
