Labour leader candidates Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham back 50p rate of tax
Labour leadership candidates Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham both say they support former Labour leader Ed Miliband’s proposal to raise the top rate of tax to 50p.
Cooper said yesterday that increasing taxes for individuals earning more than £150,000 was “the right thing to do.”
“I think that’s about Labour values, about saying the tax system should be progressive, it should be fair and, yes, I think it was unfair for those on the highest incomes to have a huge great tax cut at a time when the deficit is still too high and needs to come down,” Cooper told the BBC.
Burnham, who yesterday became the first leadership candidate to secure the required backing of 35 MPs, said that he agreed with Cooper: “Of course, in difficult times when we do still have to get the deficit down, you have to ask people with the most to make the biggest contribution.”
“It is absolutely right,” he said.
Meanwhile, fellow Labour leadership hopeful Liz Kendall has said that she does not support a permanent hike in the highest tax rate, telling an interviewer last month: “I don’t believe in taxing just for the sake of it.”