Keir Starmer has promised that he does not plan to increase taxes again during his term – although he did not rule it out in “unforeseen” circumstances.
The PM and his chancellor Rachel Reeves received extensive backlash after hiking National Insurance for employers and reducing inheritance tax relief for farmers in the October Budget, in a bid to raise £40bn.
But, speaking to BBC Breakfast, Starmer said businesses should feel “things are not going to materially change” for them again in the future.
Explaining the tax hikes, the PM said: “We’ve inherited a real mess and we’ve decided to take tough decisions, to deal with it head on.”
He said he was not “prepared to pretend” the £22bn black hole the Tories left behind in the public finances was not there.
He added: “That is tough, but we did it early, and I think anyone who has run a business, run an organisation or even decorated their house – if there’s a tough job to do, you’re better off getting on and doing it, because things will be better once you’ve done it.”
BBC presenter Charlie Stayt asked: “Can you say, in the clearest possible terms, whether from here on in to the end of your term, there will be any tax rises? I’m talking about to business, national insurance or to people’s tax. Will there be any?”
“We took really tough decisions in the Budget and we did them early. We stabilised the economy, and that was tough,” Starmer said. “I don’t want to in anyway suggest that we are going to keep coming back for more, because that isn’t the plan.”
“So no more tax rises?” Stayt pushed.
He said businesses had told him to “do the tough stuff” but that bring in a “degree of certainty” and that “things are not going to materially change”.
Starmer said: “What I can’t do is say to you there are no circumstances unforeseen in the future that wouldn’t lead to any change at all, because if you just looked at Covid and the Ukraine situation, everyone knows there are things that you can’t see now – but I can tell you now that our intention was to do the tough stuff in the Budget.”
His comments come after similar promises from Reeves – she vowed not to hike taxes any higher last month, saying public services will need to “live within their means” between now and the next election.
Starmer was also asked why he is so unpopular after his net approval ratings plummeted to -38.
“I’ll be judged at the end of the five-year term that we delivered what we said we would deliver,” the PM said, and again pointed to the “real mess” the Tories left behind in government.