It seems the Labour Party is currently having a problem defining who is a working person – so much for the so-called party of the workers.
Following the Government’s mismanagement and subsequent U-turns on pensioners’ winter fuel payments and welfare changes, and their commitment to spend huge sums handing over the Chagos Islands, satisfying their union paymasters and developing Great British Energy, higher taxes are coming – but where?
Faced with many other problems of its creation, the Labour Government is instead caught up in devising an ever-changing, contorted, meaningless explanation of ‘working people’ – all so the party can break its manifesto promise and raise our taxes.
At the last General Election, the Labour Party’s manifesto stated: “Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT”.
However, recent decisions by Sir Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and other ministers have left a giant black hole in the public finances that needs to be filled. The Resolution Foundation has said tax rises are “very likely” in the next Budget.
But how will the Labour Government do this if it promised not to increase taxes on working people? By twisting what it means to be a ‘working person’.
Before the election, Sir Keir said that working people did not have savings, yet Rachel Reeves told Sky News “there are people who do have savings, who have been able to save up and those are working people as well”.
Now the Transport Secretary has come up with her own definition, claiming that only those on “modest incomes” are working people – though what a modest income is, she didn’t say.
On Tuesday, yet another Minister said, “Well, I think it means people who are kind of around average incomes”, whilst the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said on the 14th July that it was “anyone who gets a pay slip".
Confused? Well, we are….
Labour has been using this trick since it came into Government a year ago.
Before Rachel Reeves’ ‘fiscal event’ the Education Secretary said a working person was someone “whose main income arises from the fact that they go out to work every day”. But when challenged, she wouldn’t say whether a small business owner on £13,000 a year fit this definition.
However, the Culture Secretary, just before last October’s Budget, stated that someone on a six-figure salary would be a working person “if they go to work”.
This was all capped off by the Chancellor herself, who argued that her decision to increase National Insurance contributions on employers meant that she hadn’t raised taxes on working people. You and I might think that a someone running a small business on a meagre income with a couple of members of staff counted as a working person, but apparently the Chancellor doesn’t. Despite this, the Institute for Fiscal Studies argued that the tax increase did in fact breach Labour’s manifesto.
Across Wokingham Borough, residents who are already struggling thanks to this year’s rising utility bills and taxes will most likely face losing even more of their hard-earned income.
The Conservatives are opposed to increasing taxes on hard-pressed individuals, families and businesses at a time when the Government should be working on measures like ensuring people who can work are helped to work and welfare spending is focused on those who need it. In Parliament and across the country, including in our Borough, we’ll continue making our case.
