SHADOW Chancellor Mel Stride has claimed that Labour’s National Insurance hike is contributing to higher prices and keeping mortgage costs up.
Reacting to the release of inflation figures for last month, he told GB News: “It’s far from good, 3.8% is twice the Bank of England’s target. It’s twice what the government inherited on the day of the last General Election.
“What it means, of course, is higher prices for people in their shopping baskets. We know that food inflation is running at well over 4% and this is down to this government’s choices, putting National Insurance on businesses, which is passed through to higher prices.
“Borrowing and spending lots of money has kept inflation higher, so it’s keeping up people’s mortgage costs, and it’s adding to the cost of servicing our national debt at the same time. So all in all, these are not good numbers.”
He added: “It’s down to the choices of this government because, as I say, they put National Insurance on businesses, that gets passed on by businesses by way of higher prices.
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“The huge amount of borrowing and spending that this government’s doing, an extra half a trillion pounds that this government is spending across this parliament compared to our plans. Those are the things that are keeping inflation high, and we are an outlier.
“We’ve got the highest inflation rate according to the IMF, will be this year in the G7 and also next year in the G7 so we are being outperformed by other countries, so we’re not getting inflation down as quickly as we should be.
“She [Rachel Reeves] needs to have a proper plan and some backbone, because the way to get through this is actually to get a grip and control of government spending. And I set out at our party conference some £47 billion worth of savings, a lot of it coming from welfare.
“So, driving down the welfare bill, we’ve got far too many people on those health and sickness benefits, and if you do that, then that does give you the space to then start cutting taxes.
“In fact, at our conference, we announced that where we are in power, we abolishing Stamp Duty, abolishing business rates on shops and businesses in high streets and making a big, bold offer to young people regarding lower tax on their first job so you can get taxes down, which can help to get inflation down, but only if you take the tough choices on government spending, and this government is not doing that.”
On the grooming gangs scandal, he said: “This is one of the greatest scandals that this country has ever faced, and my heart goes out to all of those victims who have been impacted in these shocking events over very many years.
“We had to push the government really hard to even agree to have a national inquiry. We made it clear that it should be a statutory inquiry, a judge-led inquiry, so either retired or an active judge leading it, and what we’ve ended up with is very little progress since the original announcements were made by the government a few months ago and a situation where those on the victims panel do not have confidence, do not trust the system and are pointing, amongst other things, to the fact that it’s a retired policeman and a retired social worker that are being put forward to lead this inquiry.
“They’re two of the categories that are actually part of the investigative work that’s going to have to be carried out here. So it is a shambles, and the Government needs to get a grip. It owes it to the victims to do that.”