Rachel Reeves has suggested she could hike taxes in the autumn.
The Chancellor said Labour would stick to its election manifesto promises not to raise national insurance, income tax or VAT, but said others could be looked at when she comes to set out the Budget on October 30.
“I think that we will have to increase taxes in the Budget,” she said while speaking to The News Agents podcast.
READ MORE: Letters: So much for Labour being the party of the working class
The Chancellor did not spell out what taxes would be raised when asked on the podcast, but sticking to the party's manifesto commitment leaves her with little choice but to raise inheritance tax or capital gains tax, or undertake pension reform.
She said: “We had in our manifesto a commitment to fiscal rules to balance day-to-day spending through tax receipts, and by the end of the forecast period, to get debt down as a share of GDP.
“Those are sensible fiscal rules to keep a grip of the public finances. We also made other commitments in our manifesto, not to increase national insurance, VAT or income tax for the duration and we’ll stick with those.”
Pressed again about which taxes could go up, she added: “We will have a Budget on October 30 and ahead of that Budget, we will have a forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility on this occasion, based on accurate numbers.”
On Monday, the Chancellor said she was making “difficult decisions” as she accused the previous government of leaving £21.9 billion of unfunded commitments that it had “covered up from the country”.
READ MORE: Rising number of parents question value of university degrees
In a statement to Parliament, she set out “immediate action” to address the shortfall by £5.5 billion, with the rest of the gap to be addressed at the Budget.
But her predecessor Jeremy Hunt claimed around half of the “black hole” in spending was down to her deciding to give above-inflation pay rises to millions of public sector workers.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel