00:00 We are all completely mystified by this figure that was thrown out
00:06 in the debates by Rishi Sunak last night.
00:09 Apparently, Labour, according to your party,
00:12 going to increase taxes by £2,000.
00:16 Labour says that's a complete and utter lie.
00:20 Why did he say it?
00:21 Well, I mean, firstly, I thought it was very telling.
00:26 He was asked ten times and couldn't rule it out.
00:30 And where the £2,000 comes from...
00:31 Sorry, he did rule it out. He called it garbage.
00:33 ..is all policies are either...
00:35 Very late in the day, he obviously got a frantic text
00:37 towards the very end of the debate,
00:39 but he actually didn't, when asked ten times, rule it out.
00:41 And that's because he knows it's true,
00:43 because every single one of those policies is something
00:45 that a Labour shadow cabinet minister has committed to,
00:48 or is in a Labour Party document
00:50 about the things they want to do in the next parliament.
00:53 And you could take just one example,
00:55 which is the most expensive amount of that £2,000
00:58 in taxes for working families figure,
01:00 which is something in my area, which is Ed Miliband's Green Plan.
01:04 And what we've done is we've actually accepted
01:06 their new cost for the Green Plan,
01:08 £23.7 billion over the next parliament,
01:11 even though what they've actually said repeatedly
01:14 is that they think the cost will be £28 billion every single year.
01:18 So it's probably an underestimate of the amount of costs
01:21 that working families are going to face under the Labour Party.
01:24 Let's just take this back, because Rishi Sunak said last night
01:27 that these numbers were done by independent civil servants.
01:31 We have here, and it's a BBC-exclusive scoop,
01:34 but I have a letter in front of me written by the permanent secretary
01:37 to the Treasury, to the shadow chief secretary of the Treasury,
01:41 saying that in your letter you highlight that the £38 billion
01:45 figure used in the Conservative Party publication includes costs
01:48 beyond those provided by the civil service
01:51 and published online by HM Treasury.
01:53 "I agree that any costings derived from other sources
01:56 "or produced by other organisations should not be presented
02:00 "of having been produced by the civil service."
02:02 That is a slap down from the permanent secretary to the Treasury.
02:06 You've been on television elsewhere this morning defending this
02:08 and saying that these are civil service numbers
02:11 and that they were not by political advisers.
02:13 Is it time to apologise?
02:14 No, absolutely not. So, actually, what the letter says
02:19 is that you can look on gov.uk and costings are done
02:22 by government departments, the Treasury,
02:23 and those are official costings.
02:25 And, again, if I just come back to the biggest number that we've used...
02:29 The letter says that the figure that was being used
02:32 should not have been used and said it came from the civil service.
02:36 That's what the letter says. I've got it in black and white in front of me.
02:40 Hang on, if you read the first couple of lines,
02:42 people can look online, there is an official document on gov.uk
02:46 which has been costed by Treasury officials,
02:48 which the letter confirms.
02:50 And, as I can say, someone who used to work in the Treasury,
02:53 Treasury officials do not sign off dodgy numbers.
02:55 They're very smart people,
02:56 they're independent, impartial civil servants,
02:58 and you cannot put something on gov.uk
03:01 if it has not been signed off by the Treasury,
03:03 which the letter also confirms.
03:04 But the poor point here is that this is all base.
03:07 Claire Coutinho, the letter agrees that the costings
03:10 which were produced by the HM Treasury and the Civil Service
03:13 are published on the website,
03:14 but the letter goes on to say, as you will expect,
03:18 "Civil servants were not involved in the production or presentation
03:22 "of the Conservative Party's document Labour's Tax Rises
03:26 "or in the calculation of the total figure used."
03:31 I agree, any costings derived from other sources
03:34 or produced by other organisations should not be presented
03:37 as having been produced by the Civil Service.
03:41 Well, look, I agree that they didn't put together a document
03:45 called Labour's Tax Rises, but they did come up
03:47 with the costings, which is on gov.uk,
03:49 which, again, as I said, the letter confirms.
03:51 But just to come back to a major point,
03:52 which I think people will really want to understand,
03:55 is that the biggest amount that we've used to come up
03:57 with that £2,000 figure is a Labour number of £23.7 billion
04:02 over the course of the next Parliament.
04:04 And as I said, that is probably an underestimate
04:07 of what Ed Miliband's Green plans will mean
04:10 in cost for the country.
04:11 And again, that's using Labour statements,
04:13 because what they said in the past
04:15 is it would cost £28 billion a year,
04:17 but we haven't used that.
04:19 We've accepted their new watering down of the figure,
04:21 even though they've kept all of the same policies in place.
04:24 So actually, this £2,000 a year is probably a vast
04:27 underestimation of what the Labour Party will cost families.
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