A senior trade union official has accused Rishi Sunak of “dragging the civil service” into the election campaign over his claims Labour will hike taxes if it wins the election.
Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union, which represents civil servants, hit out amid a growing row over the prime minister’s comments.
Sunak repeatedly claimed during last night’s TV debate with Keir Starmer that “independent Treasury civil servants” had calculated that Labour would need to put up taxes by £2,000 per household to fund its spending plans.
But the Treasury themselves have insisted that “any interpretations and assumptions are made and set by ministers and special advisers” rather than the politically neutral civil service.
Penman told HuffPost UK: “Civil servants aren’t independent, they serve the government of the day regardless of political colour.
“The figures being quoted are based on assumptions made by special special advisers and ministers that civil servants are then asked to calculate.
“Successive governments have done this, but what it does not represent is an independent assessment from the civil service.
“Dragging the civil service in to a row about overtly party political assumptions on tax and spend by pretending this is somehow ‘independent’ only threatens the impartiality of the civil service which ministers have a duty under the ministerial code to protect.”
Meanwhile, the BBC reported this morning that James Bowler, the top civil servant in the Treasury, had also disputed the Tories’ claims.
In a letter to Darren Jones, Labour’s shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, he said: “I agree that any costings derived from other sources or produced by other organisations should not be presented as having been produced by the civil service.
“I have reminded ministers and advisers that this should be the case.”