Next with Health Secretary Victoria Atkins, we turn to the budget this week, and Trevor Phillips asks how the Conservative Party has the “gall” to say it is a tax cutting party when the tax burden is going to rise to the highest level since the Second World War.
Ms Atkins starts trying to say the party has cut taxes twice, but is cut off by Trevor who says seven million people will be dragged into a higher tax band by 2029.
She says the national insurance cuts amount to savings of around £900 per person which will “make a real difference to the nurses, the hospital porters, the receptionists and other people who work in the NHS”.
She also says economic conditions have been “tough” since the pandemic, adding: “We as Conservatives believe that we have to deal with that debt ourselves.
“We do not want to pass that debt on to our children and our grandchildren, which is why we had to make the very difficult decisions.”
Given that freezing tax thresholds will actually amount to a tax increase over the next five years, Trevor asks the health secretary why the government won’t be straight with us and admit the government needs more money to spend.
Ms Atkins – previously a Treasury minister – insists she has been “straight” with the public and does not “resile from that”.
But she says they want to reduce tax, and adds: “We’ve achieved this just not just in the spring budget, as I say, but also in autumn statement.
“And we have done that without borrowing, without, you know, reducing spending across departments.”
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