Rachel Reeves has warned taxes will be higher at the next election than they were at the last one, in her autumn statement response. It follows the chancellor's announcement that he will cut the main rate of national insurance by 2 percentage points to 10%. The shadow chancellor says the change "will not remotely compensate for tax increases already put in place by this Conservative government". Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 The centrepiece of today's autumn statement is a cut in the headline rate of national
00:06 insurance. I am old enough to remember when the Prime Minister wanted to put up national
00:14 insurance. As recently as January last year, he said, "We must go ahead with the increase
00:22 in the health and care levy. It is progressive in that the burden falls most on those who
00:27 can most afford it." Utter nonsense. It was a tax on working people, and we opposed it
00:34 for that very reason. Yet again, the Prime Minister is left arguing against himself.
00:42 In response to last year's autumn statement, I warned that the Government were pickpocketing
00:48 working people through stealth taxes. I have long argued that taxes on working people are
00:54 too high. Indeed, I said in my conference speech that I want them to be lower. From
00:59 their failure to uprate income tax or national insurance bans to forcing councils to raise
01:05 council tax, the Conservatives have pushed the costs of their failure on to others. But
01:11 the British people will not be taken for fools. They know that what has been announced today
01:17 owes more to the cynicism of a party desperate to cling on to power than the real priorities
01:23 of this high-tax, low-growth Conservative Government. So I think that we can forgive
01:29 taxpayers for not celebrating when they see the truth behind today's announcements.
01:34 Going into this statement, the Government had already put in place tax increases worth
01:40 the equivalent of a 10p increase in national insurance. So today's 2p cut will not remotely
01:48 compensate for the tax creases already put in place by this Conservative Government.
01:55 The fact is that taxes will be higher at the next election than they were at the last.
02:01 This is the legacy of the Conservatives, and that, Mr Speaker, is their record.
02:05 - Yeah. - Yeah.