The Conservatives insisted on Tuesday that they would “comfortably” find the money to protect “millions of pensioners” from paying more in tax if re-elected as they strove to make up ground on Labour.
Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride confirmed that the £2.4 billion campaign promise for an enhanced “triple lock” would be funded through putting the squeeze on tax dodgers – whom Rishi Sunak is also targeting to pay for his plan to force 18-year-olds to do national service.
Mr Stride said on Times Radio: “We can comfortably raise £6 billion from clamping down on tax avoidance and evasion and that figure, in fact, is very much in line with the kind of figures that we’ve achieved in the past.
“So we’ve got six [billion] that we’re saving through avoidance and evasion... £1 billion of that is going into the national service and the remainder is going to fund this important tax cut for our pensioners.”
Mr Stride pushed back at Labour criticism that the pensions vow was “desperate” and “laughable”, and denied that the Tory campaign was being blown off course. One minister, Steve Baker, has opted to stay on holiday and complained that the national service proposal was “sprung on candidates”.
The pensions secretary said the much-mocked proposal was a “great idea” with 80 per cent of young Swedes saying they would recommend their own experience of national service to a friend.
He said that Tory candidates are fighting “tooth and nail” up and down the country, and that it was “regrettable” that outgoing Telford MP Lucy Allan is backing Reform UK in her constituency.
If Labour win the election on July 4, Mr Stride claimed that many more “millions of pensioners” would be “dragged into paying tax” and that the Tory proposal amounts to a tax cut by lifting the age-related personal allowance.
Labour pointed out that millions in Britain are already paying more income tax now because Mr Sunak and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt have frozen thresholds.
Liberal Democrat Treasury spokeswoman Sarah Olney said: “The sheer hypocrisy of the Conservatives to claim they are on the side of pensioners is laughable at best and dishonest at worst.”
Labour was moving on to the economy with shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves vowing in a speech on Tuesday to lead “the most pro-growth, the most pro-business Treasury that our country has ever seen”.
Sir Keir Starmer’s party was buoyed by the endorsement of 121 business leaders including TV chef Tom Kerridge who wrote in The Times that it was “time for a change”.
Labour is facing anger from trades unionists for allegedly watering down commitments to workers’ rights. But Ms Reeves vowed a “government that is pro-worker and pro-business, in the knowledge that each depends upon the success of the other”.
The former Bank of England economist, stressing Labour’s commitment to stability, urged voters to “pass judgment on 14 years of economic chaos and decline under the Conservative Party - 14 years that have seen taxes reach a 70-year high”.
