Tory PM Rishi Sunak tonight claimed Labour was going to leave working families £2,000 out of pocket with planned tax increases if Keir Starmer got into power. In a feisty first general election debate, hosted by ITV, Sunak repeated the £2,000 figure again and again before an outraged Starmer slammed it as “absolute garbage” and claimed the Conservative Party “put pretend policies into the Treasury and get a false readout”.
But what is the truth behind the claims? Where does Sunak get his £2,000 figure from and why does he claim Labour’s planned tax policies will see UK families two grand worse off?
Here is everything we know about the reality, as compiled by WalesOnline:
The Labour party has said in recent weeks that it will not raise income tax, national insurance or VAT – something Mr Sunak also agreed his party would not do during the debate. Labour’s website says “Labour will not raise income tax, national insurance or VAT.” Mr Starmer said it would raise more tax revenue through policies like closing loopholes which allow non-dom people to avoid tax and by taxing energy giants. The Labour website says it will pay for its “first steps in government” by:
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Ending tax breaks for private schools, which exempt them from VAT and business rates
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Closing the loopholes which allow some ‘non-dom’ mega rich people who live in the UK to avoid paying tax
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Introducing a proper windfall tax on the huge profits the energy giants are making.
At the end of May, Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves told the BBC: “What I want and Keir [Starmer] wants is taxes on working people to be lower and we certainly won’t be increasing income tax or national insurance if we win at the election.”
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In a report produced on behalf of the Conservative party in May, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt says that “policy commitments made by Labour [show] that Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are making billions of pounds of unfunded spending commitments with no plan to pay for them”. He says this figure amounts to £38.5bn over five years. and adds: “This means one of two things – either Labour will break their fiscal rules or they will have to put taxes up.”
So where does this figure of £2,000, which is also given in an ad campaign being run by the Conservatives, come from?
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Anthony Reuben of BBC Verify explains: “They have come up with this figure by adding up how much they claim Labour’s spending commitments would cost, and dividing this by the number of UK households with at least one person working.”
Which does not back Mr Sunak’s claim that Labour is planning to put the average working family’s tax bill up by £2,000.