Labour won’t increase income tax or national insurance if it wins the general election, Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor of the Exchequer, has promised.
She made the commitment on Sunday after saying both she and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer want taxes on working people to be lower, while noting she would not put forward “unfunded proposals.”
She has also declined to set a timeline for increasing defence spending to 2.5 percent of the economy.
Speaking to BBC One’s “Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg” programme, Ms. Reeves said, “We certainly won’t be increasing income tax or national insurance if we win the election.
The Labour frontbencher also said there is “not going to be a return to austerity” under Labour, with commitments to boost frontline services a “down payment on the changes that we want to make.”
“But in the end, we have to grow the economy, we have to turn around this dire economic performance,” she said.
“I don’t want to make any cuts to public spending which is why we’ve announced the immediate injection of cash into public services,” the shadow chancellor added.
“So that money for our NHS, the additional police—13,000 additional police and community officers—and the 6,500 additional teachers in our schools, they are all fully costed and fully funded promises because unless things are fully costed and fully funded, frankly, you can’t believe they’re going to happen.”
Ms. Reeves said Labour will be “unlike the Conservatives, who have already racked up £64 billion of unfunded tax cuts in just three days of this campaign.
“I will never play fast and loose with the public finances, I will never put forward unfunded proposals,” she said.
However, the shadow chancellor didn’t rule out public spending cuts when challenged on her plans.
Asked when Labour would increase defence spending to 2.5 percent of GDP, Ms. Reeves said: “We’re not going to put a timetable on that.
“We’ve committed to do in government a strategic defence review to make sure that we’re getting value for money for all of our spending, including on defence where some of the procurement costs of purchasing new equipment have, frankly, got out of control under this government,” she said.
Ms. Reeves also insisted Labour “will end fire and rehire” after a union criticised the party for excluding an outright ban on the practice in the final version of its workers’ rights package.
The shadow chancellor said she is “sorry that Sharon feels like that”—after Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said the plans now have “more holes than Swiss cheese”—but defended the pledges.
“We will end fire and rehire which has seen companies … sack all their staff and then try and bring them back on worse contracts,” she said.
“That is deplorable and we will not allow that to happen.”
On Saturday, Sir Keir defended Labour’s decision to rebrand its package of workers’ rights pledges from the “New Deal for Working People” to “Labour’s plan to make work pay,” saying there had been “no watering down” of the plans.
“It’s also something which I think employers and good businesses would say, ‘looking at the detail of it, this is what we’re doing in good businesses,’” he told the BBC.
Elements of the deal include a “right to switch off,” a proposed ban on “exploitative” zero hours contracts and stronger employment rights from day one of a new job.
The party has also said it wants to empower adult social care professionals and trade unions that represent them to negotiate a sector-wide agreement for pay, terms, and conditions.
Several unions have backed the plans, saying they represent a vital step towards better protections for employees.
But Unite suggested the wording had been softened, with a previous proposal to ban zero hours contracts revised to refer only to “exploitative” zero hours contracts.
Labour has also said on Sunday that it would revive Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s plan to ban young people from smoking, which was dropped following his surprise call for a July 4 general election.
The abandoned Tobacco and Vapes Bill proposed to ban the selling of tobacco products to anyone born on or after Jan. 1, 2009.
Asked about Labour’s plan, shadow work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall said: “If we’re elected we will make that happen and make it less likely that young people will smoke than vote Tory.”
