Victoria Derbyshire clashes with Chris Philp over Labour tax attacks: ‘You’re wrong’

Victoria Derbyshire clashes with Chris Philp over Labour tax policy attacksSOURCE: BBC

Transcript

00:00Those tax changes and many others, the Labour Party have not ruled out.

00:04OK, well, let me pause you right there.

00:07Labour have ruled out both imposing capital gains tax on people's family home

00:12and they have ruled out re-evaluating council tax bans.

00:17So you're wrong.

00:19Well, when Rachel Reeves was asked about that a couple of weeks ago,

00:24she did not expressly ruled it out.

00:26In fact, what she said to the studio in an interview was she said,

00:29I'm not going to write five years worth of budgets before we've even had an election.

00:33So she's quite clearly giving herself the option to raise these taxes quite clearly.

00:38The leader is Sir Keir Starmer.

00:39He told The Telegraph and the BBC when asked if he would explicitly rule out capital gains tax,

00:45he said, absolutely.

00:46It was never a policy, so it doesn't need ruling out.

00:48So let's rule it out in case anybody pretends that it was.

00:52And we've seen from the analysis that was done and debated extensively four or five weeks ago

00:57that there are those, I think it's 19 Labour spending pledges offset by eight revenue raisers

01:03that have a £38 billion hole, which means the average family over the next,

01:08working family over the next parliament will pay £2,000, £2,094 in extra taxation,

01:15which we went through in detail a few weeks ago.

01:17Yeah, Mr. Philp, those figures, as you know, have been widely ridiculed.

01:21The top civil servant at the Treasury said specifically, do not present those figures

01:27as though they have been compiled by impartial civil servants.

01:31I just wonder, with three days to go...

01:33Hang on, hang on, 21, hang on, 21.

01:35He was talking about the totals.

01:37So it's true the civil servants didn't add them up,

01:39but 21 of those 27 measures were costed by Treasury officials, 21 of the 27.

01:45And in addition to that, I think about three or four more came from government departments.

01:49Two of them came from the Labour Party themselves and one of them came from an investment bank.

01:54So it is extremely well sourced and it's extremely clearly laid out as a public document.

01:59If you Google it, your viewers and your listeners can find it.

02:02And it adds up to a £38 billion black hole over the course of the next parliament,

02:07which is about £2,000 per working household that can only be paid for by tax increases.

02:13And that's why it's important to press the Labour Party on which taxes they're going to put up.

02:17And when Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, declines to rule it out, it's pretty clear why.

02:22It's because they've got a black hole, Phil.

02:23Mr Philp, is this how desperate you are now?

02:27You're literally making things up.

02:29Well, that's absolute nonsense.