The Chancellor has said on Monday that she will is not ruling out taxing the wealthy and insisted protections are in place for “working people.”
Rachel Reeves has vowed she will not increase national insurance, VAT or income tax along with the Chancellor’s “non-negotiable” fiscal rules.
Reeves has a multi-billion-pound black hole over her U-turns on the winter fuel payments and welfare reforms.
Reeves told reporters, “We haven’t even set the date for the budget yet, so please forgive me if I’m not going to speculate about what might happen at an event that we haven’t even decided a date on yet.
“But we’ve been really clear in our manifesto about the taxes that we won’t increase, and we’re not going to increase the taxes that working people pay, their income tax, their national insurance and their VAT, because I do recognise the struggle that ordinary working people have faced these last few years with the cost of living.”
The Chancellor is on course to meet the funding of day-to-day spending with revenues instead of borrowing, but if there is any increase to debt interest costs or if there is a dip in savings such as welfare this will leave Reeves vulnerable.
Reeves said, “Interest rates have come down four times in the last year under this Labour Government because of the stability that we’ve managed to return to the economy, which is underpinned by those fiscal rules, which have enabled the Bank of England to cut interest rates.”
