A senior Labour frontbencher today refused to rule out the party raising and revaluing council tax rates if it wins the election.
Wes Streeting was grilled over Labour’s tax plans regarding homes and the NHS in a round of media interviews this morning.
And the shadow health secretary would not confirm that the party would match a Conservative manifesto pledge to leave council tax bands where they are – at a level set more than 30 years ago.
The Conservatives also suggested that he backed tax rises to fund NHS improvements. Mr Streeting was questioned about a Nuffield Truss claim, reported by the Observer, that Labour and Tory manifesto plans for the health service would see it worse off than it was in the austerity years in the last decade.
He told Sky News’s Trevor Phillip: ‘Where I disagree with The Nuffield Trust is the assumption they are making that this manifesto is the grand sum total of any future budgets and any future spending reviews. That is just wrong. That is not the way election campaigns work.’
Transport Secretary Mark Harper told GB News: ‘The programmes that Wes Streeting was on – he’s let the cat out of the bag that there’s more Labour’s spending coming that’s not in the manifesto.
‘He said the manifesto is effectively a document to get them through an election campaign and that means only one thing, it means what we’ve been saying is correct which is you vote Labour there are unfunded spending promises and that can only mean more taxes on hard-working families.’
Wes Streeting was grilled over Labour’s tax plans regarding homes and the NHS in a round of media interviews this morning.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper said: ‘The programmes that Wes Streeting was on – he’s let the cat out of the bag that there’s more Labour’s spending coming that’s not in the manifesto.
Last week Rishi Sunak unveiled the Tory manifesto, which includes the Family Home Tax Guarantee, pledging no increase in stamp duty or capital gains tax on the family home and no new council tax bands or revaluations.
However critics have pointed out that the current eight-band system was introduced in 1991 and does not take into account massive house price increases since.
They argue the current system is overly biases in favour of people in bigger, more expensive homes, who pay a smaller proportion of their property’s worth in council tax than people in smaller, cheaper homes.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies last week said Tory commitments to keep current bands meant ‘the majority of properties [are] now effectively in the wrong band; not revaluing would entrench the unfairness in a system which must eventually be unsustainable.’
Pressed on whether revaluation could happen under a Labour government on Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg, Mr Streeting repeated the party’s line: ‘We don’t want to see the tax burden on working people increase…
‘None of those pledges in our manifesto requires increases in council tax or increases in fuel duty or any of the other number of taxes the Tories are claiming we want to increase.’
He also claimed the Tories have ‘baked into their plans council tax rises, that’s in the government’s spending forecast’ above the rate of inflation.
Mr Streeting also urged junior doctors to call off their strike and said he is ‘beyond furious’ the dispute is not yet resolved.
He told Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips on Sky News: ‘I don’t think there’s anything to be achieved by having strikes in the election campaign. The only thing we will see is more untold misery inflicted on patients who see their appointments and procedures delayed and also junior doctors out of pocket.’
He continued: ‘If there is a Labour government on July 5, I will be phoning them on day one and asking the department to get talks up and running urgently…
‘I’m beyond furious that this is still happening.’
But he said ‘the money isn’t there’ to give junior doctors a 35 per cent pay rise.
