Treasury minister Darren Jones struggles to define ‘modest income’
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones says Labour’s “working people” tax pledge refers to “anyone that gets a payslip, basically”.
Rachel Reeves’ deputy was asked across multiple interviews on Monday morning to clarify who exactly would be shielded from tax hikes, and whether Labour’s pre-election promises not to raise levies on “working people” will hold.
Questioned by LBC’s Tom Swarbrick on Alexander’s comments and on what defines “modest income”, Jones appeared to fall back on a catch-all description of “working people”.
He said: “What Heidi was referring to yesterday … was our manifesto commitment, which we’ve talked about before. Where we promised not to increase the headline rate of income tax and national insurance in people’s payslips – that’s what we refer to as working people.”
Jones’ broad definition is a break from transport secretary Heidi Alexander, who pledged on Sky News on Sunday morning that there would be no tax rises for “people on modest incomes”.
She said: “We made a commitment in our manifesto not to be putting up taxes on people on modest incomes, working people. We have stuck to that.”
Pressed on what this means, Jones said: “I think modest means different things to different people.
“The very clear policy commitment we have as a government, that was in our manifesto going into government, was the headline rate of income tax and employee national insurance that people pay in their payslip alongside VAT.”
Tax commitment wobbles?
Asked to repeat the Chancellor’s previous commitments that the government would unfreeze tax thresholds by 2028/29, Jones said he would not speculate on tax policy, adding: “I don’t refute what the Chancellor has said. It’s on the public record.”
“That’s government policy today. But what I’m not going to do is speculate one way or another about any form of tax policy, because that’s not the way we do things as a country.”
The Chancellor reportedly warned ministers earlier in July that the government’s climbdown on welfare reform, following a Labour rebellion, meant that tax rises are becoming inevitable.
Elsewhere on the media round, Jones told BBC Breakfast: “People have lots of definitions of who is and isn’t wealthy, often based on your own circumstances. The thing that the Labour Party promised coming into government, that we’ve honoured at the Budget, is that we are protecting people through their payslips.”
“We put a definition around that of working people, because it’s payslips, which you get by going to work.”
Pressed again on Sky News, this time to define “people with the broadest shoulders” – a phrase used repeatedly by Labour figures in and around the government – Jones said “there’s lots of undefined phrases out there”.