Wales' First Minister has heavily criticised the mini-Budget unveiled on Friday, branding it "authentically shocking" and describing it as a "giant experiment" that will leave families worse off, long into the future. Mark Drakeford was speaking from the Labour Party conference that begins in Liverpool on Sunday.
His comments came two days after Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng's mini-budget of sweeping tax cuts, that Labour has said would "reward the already wealthy" and not boost economic growth. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who believes his party now had a belief it would win the next general election, has hit out at the Government's "wrongheaded" economic policies as he pledged to reverse the income tax cut for people earning more than £150,000.
But he said the Tory policy was for the "rich to get richer" while offering little to ordinary workers but said Labour would reinstate the 45p additional rate of income tax for top earners which Mr Kwarteng abolished from April next year. Sir Keir did, however, say he backed Mr Kwarteng's promise to cut the basic rate of income tax from 20p to 19p.
Read more: How the mini budget will affect you living in Wales
Meanwhile, Mark Drakeford was scathing in his criticism of the budget, telling BBC's Politics Wales on Sunday: "I thought it was an authentically shocking set of announcements. Voodoo economics as it used to be known, when the first time this trickle down theory was tried, but failed. Here we are being subjected to a giant experiment that will leave so many families worse off, and for so long into the future.
"The idea that you would deal with the current condition of the United Kingdom by rewarding the rich, and punishing the poor, to me, is unfathomable."
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Asked if he supported the 1p cut in the basic rate of income tax next April, Mr Drakeford said: "Whether I support what the UK Government does is neither here, nor there. They have made that decision. What it means for Wales is there is a decision for the Welsh Government, and that is what I will be focused on in our Budget setting over the autumn.
"We will have to look at Welsh rates of income tax, and we will do that in the round. Looking to see the impact of those decisions on public services here in Wales. Not a single penny to sustain public services, not a single penny to help with paying proper rates of pay to people we relied on during the pandemic.
"We will look in the round at the impact of the UK Government's decisions, and feed that into the decisions we ourselves have to make as part of our Budget making process".
On investment zones that were announced with the Budget, areas with low tax and low regulations, Mr Drakeford said they had worked closely with the last Conservative administration and was able to agree on a prospectus for a free port in Wales, saying it showed they could work together.
He added: "We demonstrated that we can work with a Conservative government, and that we were capable together of coming to a shared conclusion. Our prospectus for free ports is very clear, there will be no regression on labour standards, there will be no regression on environmental protections in a free port in Wales. Of course, we will have a conversation with the Chancellor about the latest idea, but it will be on the basis that we will not be prepared to sign up to something that leads to the rights of working people being eroded, and the protections necessary to protect the environment being abandoned."
Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has hit back, denying that his new tax cuts favour those at the top, stating that he is "focused on tax cuts across the board."
When it was put to him that his mini-budget "favour overwhelmingly people at the very top", he told the BBC's Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: "They favour people right across the income scale."
Mr Kwarteng also indicated that there are more tax cuts to come. He said: "Looking at the Friday statement, we've actually put more money into people's pockets.
"That's why we've reversed the national insurance increase - which I think was not a good policy and we've reversed that - and also we're bringing forward the cut in the basic rate and there's more to come.
"We've only been here 19 days. I want to see, over the next year, people retain more of their income because I believe that it's the British people that are going to drive this economy."
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