Blair: No tax promises until after the Budget
Tony Blair today appeared to rule out the possibility of a snap general election by telling the House of Commons that election commitments on tax would be made after the Budget.
The Budget is due in April, making a May general election increasingly likely. Newspapers had speculated that he might call a snap election in February in order to wrong-foot his opponents.
His comments came in response to a question from Tory backbencher Eric Forth, who called on Mr Blair to rule out any tax rises in the next parliament.
Mr Blair said that the Chancellor would set out any tax plans in the Budget, and then any tax plans or commitments would be outlined in Labour’s general election manifesto. He added that Labour, unlike the Conservative Party, “would not “make promises that they could not keep”.
Earlier, the Conservative leader and the Prime Minister clashed on the parties’ respective spending policies, with Mr Howard pressing Mr Blair to offer assurances on the basic and top rate of income tax and National Insurance contributions.
Mr Howard argued that a number of economic analysts were predicting that taxes would have to go up in a third term.
Mr Blair said: “I think they are wrong for this very simple reason: that the Treasury forecasts on the economy have been proven right.”
And he derided the Tories recently released proposals to cut £35 billion of Government spending, saying that the figures were based on the Government’s own savings and some “incredible savings” – such as cutting £1 billion from the commissioning process in Primary Care Trusts, when the current running total is only £90 million.
He added: “He and his party has lost any pitiful credibility they had and we will enjoy pursuing it”
Instead of savings, “what is going to be cut is not bureaucracy but regeneration plans in local communities” and “that is not waste but cuts in frontline services”.
“What we will never do is promise to cut taxes and spend more” saying this Conservative approach led to “boom and bust”.
But Mr Howard defended his plans and warned of “more waste and higher taxes under Labour”, asking, “has there ever been a Government that has wasted so much, taxed so much and achieved so little?”
