The Prime Minister was challenged over his election promise not to raise taxes.
Keir Starmer lost his cool on Sky News this lunchtime when challenged by Beth Rigby over Labour’s broken election promises. The Prime Minister was asked why he had told voters during last year’s election campaign that he wouldn’t raise taxes to abolish the two-child benefit cap.
However in yesterday’s Budget Rachel Reeves whacked up taxes by £26 billion in order to fund the £4.6 billion move, which will now allow those with three children or more to receive unlimited child benefit. He “accepted the challenge that we’ve asked everybody to contribute”, but insisted it was worth taxing Britons more in order to lift children out of poverty. Sky’s political editor launched into a brutal take-down of the PM, telling him: “You told people in the run-up to the election we will not raise your taxes, people are taxed too high.
Starmer appeared furious at Rigby’s questions (Image: Sky News)
“800,000 people are being dragged into taxes from your measures yesterday. 1 million people are being dragged into higher tax bands – you have misled the public! You’ve broken your promises! Just acknowledge it please! Please be honest.”
Sir Keir insisted he had been forced to hike taxes due to the Office for Budget Responsibility downgrading productivity forecasts, which he argued was a result of the previous government.
The OBR cut productivity projections by 0.3 points yesterday, losing Rachel Reeves billions in estimated tax revenues.
Ms Rigby also challenged Sir Keir over the abolition of the two-child benefit cap, pointing out he told voters during the election that they wouldn’t be able to pay for lifting the child benefit cap.
“You said, ‘it’s a difficult thing, I want to put it in my manifesto, we can’t. I’m being honest with the public, we can’t afford it because I don’t want to put people’s taxes up’.
“You’ve done exactly the opposite, you’ve lost the confidence of voters.”
Rachel Reeves abolished the cap yesterday (Image: Getty)
Sir Keir became visibly testy at this challenge, hitting back: “I absolutely do believe you’ve got to lift children out of poverty. We’ve had a two-child cap in place for best part of 10 years. The net result of that is that hundreds of thousands of children have been living in poverty!
“That has a massive impact on their health… those children will not have the opportunity to go as far as their talents will allow.
“I’m not going to apologise for lifting half a million children out of poverty!”
He insisted the decision hadn’t come out of party politics and pressure from his backbenchers.
The Prime Minister claimed he has “repeatedly to you and everyone else said I want a Labour government to drive down child poverty”.
“This is not a decision of the last few weeks or months. I have said that from the get-go. It’s a moral mission it’s a personal mission.”
