Rachel Reeves is in a hole, but she just keeps digging
Only the Conservatives have a plan to turn the economy around by abolishing stamp duty, cut welfare spending and get Britain back to work, says Andrew Griffith
Rachel Reeves’ much-dreaded Autumn Budget is now just over a month away. And with each passing week there is a crescendo building.
It’s made up of voices from across business, politics and everyday life. And they’re all saying one thing: Don’t Hike Taxes.
It’s easy to see why. In the last budget, Reeves launched a £40bn tax raid. Since then, 150,000 people have lost their jobs. Growth is flatlining, at just 0.1 per cent in the past month. Inflation is on course to hit the highest level in the G7. Borrowing has grown to unsustainable levels and debt is piling up. And the welfare bill continues to spiral out of control, with a staggering 6.5m working-age people – more than ten per cent of the population – on out-of-work benefits.
When you’re stuck in a hole, you don’t keep digging. A competent Chancellor would look at all this mess and change course. But we don’t have a competent Chancellor. We’ve got someone who lied on her CV. In fact, we’ve got a Cabinet with no business experience. They simply don’t know how it works.
Luckily Reeves doesn’t need to do much thinking to find a plan. We Conservatives have just announced one.
£47bn welfare savings
At our Conference we set out a strong list of measures to cut taxes and get our economy moving. First, we identified £47bn of savings to get public finances under control and create the space for tax cuts. That includes £23bn of savings from getting the welfare out-of-control bill under control.
And £8bn from slashing the civil service headcount; £7bn from cutting the overseas aid budget and £3.5bn from ending the use of asylum hotels, plus other savings.
Then we laid out our positive plan for growing the economy: 100 per cent Business Rates relief for 250,000 high street businesses, giving pubs, restaurants, shops and leisure an enormous boost.
Stamp duty for homeowners scrapped, freeing up our housing market and making it easier to buy or move home. The family business and family farm death taxes binned, stopping the punishment of those who work hard.
Double funding for apprenticeships, giving young people the skills to get good jobs.
And re-opening the North Sea oil and gas fields to bring down energy costs for businesses and households alike. That is a plan to reverse the decline, freeing businesses and hard-working people to grow Britain’s economy.
You can’t tax your way to growth. Labour should have learned that lesson from the 1970s. Yet Rachel Reeves is gearing up for more tax raids to cover the gaping holes in her sums.
Since she came into office, the so-called black hole in the finances has more than doubled.
At the conference of the Confederation of British Industry last year, she said she wouldn’t be coming back to businesses for more and that her tax raids were over. She lied.
In fact, she hopes to throw more of your money at the problems she has created, in the hope that doing what she did last time will magically work this time round. That’s what Labour always do – spend more, borrow more, tax more. And they will keep doing it until there is nothing left.
The truth is that Reeves is scrambling desperately to fix the mess she has created, but she is only making it worse. She is all out of ideas, and so she is making the same mistakes she made last year all over again.
Only the Conservatives have a plan to drive growth, reduce the tax burden and deliver a stronger economy.
Andrew Griffith is shadow secretary of state for business and trade