Prime Minister Keir Starmer has refused to repeat a pledge made by Rachel Reeves not to impose more tax rises on businesses. At the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) conference on Monday, Ms Reeves said she would not be “coming back with more borrowing or more taxes” when asked if she could rule out a further increase in business levies.
Her remarks were widely interpreted as a promise not to increase taxes on firms during the rest of the five-year parliament after the National Insurance rise in the Budget. But challenged at the despatch box over the Chancellor’s promise, the Prime Minister said he was “not going to write the next five years of Budgets”.
Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, asked Sir Keir to repeat the Chancellor’s pledge at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday. She said: “At the CBI conference on Monday, the Chancellor said: ‘I am clear, I am not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes.'”I know that telling the truth to this House is important to the Prime Minister, so will he repeat his Chancellor’s pledge now?”
Sir Keir replied: “We set out our position at the Budget, it was just set out, we are fixing the foundations, we are dealing with the £22 billion black hole that they left.”I am not going to write the next five years of Budgets here at this despatch box. But we said we wouldn’t hit the pay slips of working people, we passed the Budget, we invested in the future, and we kept that promise.”
On Tuesday, Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary, refused to repeat the pledge, telling MPs: “What the Chancellor was saying, is to make clear that that need to fix the foundations is a one-time deal, that there will not be a further ask of the business community comparable to what we had to do at the beginning of this Parliament.”
A spokesman for the Treasury also declined to repeat the Chancellor’s promise on tax. “As the Chancellor said, this was a once-in-a-Parliament Budget to wipe the slate clean, repair the nation’s finances and begin to fix public services,” he said.
“We have taken tough decisions to bring stability back so the focus can now be on growing the economy and reforming public services.”
