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Keir Starmer is being interviews on BBC Breakfast now by Henry Zeffman, the BBC’s chief political correspondent.
Q: You are talking about a social homes investment. But the country needs 1.5 million homes.
Starmer says the investment summit yesterday was important. Investors are now saying they want to back the country. Young people know that owning their own home is the “base camp” for aspirations in life.
The government wants to let them do this, he says.
Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has said that he thinks raising employers’ national insurance would be a breach of Labour’s manifesto. He told Times Radio recently:
It seems to me that would be a straightforward breach of a manifesto commitment.
I went back and read the manifesto and it says very clearly we will not raise rates of national insurance.
It doesn’t specify employee national insurance.
Politicians are often happy to ignore the IFS. But it is seen as the nearest the country has got to a neutral “umpire” on budget matters.
Opening summary
Good morning. Conventional wisdom (often citing George Bush, and his “Read my lips, no new taxes” pledge) says that it is fatal for politicians to break election promises. In reality, that is not always the case. David Cameron never came close to meeting his 2010 commitment to get net migration below 100,000, and that did not stop him being re-elected in 2015 (although it did help him lose the 2016 Brexit referendum). There were many reasons why Boris Johnson was forced out of office, but raising national insurance in breach of a 2019 manifesto promise is not usually seen as one of his career-ending mistakes.
Nevertheless, breaking a promise is a huge risk, and that is why the very strong hints that Rachel Reeves will raiser employers’ national insurance in the budget has opened up a key debate. As Richard Partington and Kiran Stacey report, Labour is arguing that its pledge not to raise national insurance only covered employees’ national insurance, because the party repeatedly talked about taxes on working people.
But the Conservatives are saying people clearly took the promise to cover all national insurance. Laura Trott, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, issued this statement last night, after Reeves gave an interview clarifying her interpretation of the Labour pledge. Trott said:
The chancellor has chosen Labour’s first investment summit to sow further uncertainty and chaos for businesses who are now braced for Labour’s Jobs Tax.
Regardless of what they say, it’s obvious to all that hiking employer national insurance is a clear breach of Labour’s manifesto. Rachel Reeves herself previously called it anti-business and we agree, it is a tax on work that will deter investment, employment and growth, and the OBR says it will lower wages.
Keir Starmer is giving an interview to BBC Breakfast at 8.30am, so we are likely to hear his take then.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Keir Starmer chairs a meeting of political cabinet.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
11.30am: Wes Streeting, the health secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
After 12.30pm: MPs debate the second reading of the House of Lords (hereditary peers) bill, which will remove the right of remaining hereditary peers to sit in the Lords.
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