Consumer champion Martin Lewis pushed Cabinet minister Claire Coutinho to apologise live on TV over the Tories claim of a £2,000 tax hike on households if Labour wins the election.The Money Saving Expert challenged the Energy Security Secretary about the tax allegation when she appeared on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.In the first TV debate on Tuesday night, Rishi Sunak repeatedly accused Sir Keir Starmer of having an economic plan which would mean households in Britain would see their tax bills rise by £2,000.Only after being probed repeatedly about this claim did the Labour leader eventually dismiss it as “absolute garbage”.The figures for this alleged £38 billion tax hit on the country were, at least partially, based on calculations done by civil servants at the Treasury, though reportedly at the request of Tory special advisers.Labour has dismissed the Tories’ publication on its tax plans as a “lie,” saying it includes policies which it is not planning to bring in, or not on the scale proposed.Labour this morning put out a letter, sent from the Treasury’s top civil servant James Bowler to Darren Jones, the shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, about the Tories’ claims about Labour’s tax plans.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 We are all completely mystified by this figure that was thrown out
00:06 in the debates by Rishi Sunak last night.
00:09 Apparently, Labour, according to your party,
00:12 going to increase taxes by £2,000.
00:16 Labour says that's a complete and utter lie.
00:20 Why did he say it?
00:21 Well, I mean, firstly, I thought it was very telling.
00:26 He was asked ten times and couldn't rule it out.
00:30 And where the £2,000 comes from...
00:31 Sorry, he did rule it out. He called it garbage.
00:33 ..is all policies are either...
00:35 Very late in the day, he obviously got a frantic text
00:37 towards the very end of the debate,
00:39 but he actually didn't, when asked ten times, rule it out.
00:41 And that's because he knows it's true,
00:43 because every single one of those policies is something
00:45 that a Labour shadow cabinet minister has committed to,
00:48 or is in a Labour Party document
00:50 about the things they want to do in the next parliament.
00:53 And you could take just one example,
00:55 which is the most expensive amount of that £2,000
00:58 in taxes for working families figure,
01:00 which is something in my area, which is Ed Miliband's Green Plan.
01:04 And what we've done is we've actually accepted
01:06 their new cost for the Green Plan,
01:08 £23.7 billion over the next parliament,
01:11 even though what they've actually said repeatedly
01:14 is that they think the cost will be £28 billion every single year.
01:18 So it's probably an underestimate of the amount of costs
01:21 that working families are going to face under the Labour Party.
01:24 Let's just take this back, because Rishi Sunak said last night
01:27 that these numbers were done by independent civil servants.
01:31 We have here, and it's a BBC-exclusive scoop,
01:34 but I have a letter in front of me written by the permanent secretary
01:37 to the Treasury, to the shadow chief secretary of the Treasury,
01:41 saying that in your letter you highlight that the £38 billion
01:45 figure used in the Conservative Party publication includes costs
01:48 beyond those provided by the civil service
01:51 and published online by HM Treasury.
01:53 "I agree that any costings derived from other sources
01:56 "or produced by other organisations should not be presented
02:00 "of having been produced by the civil service."
02:02 That is a slap down from the permanent secretary to the Treasury.
02:06 You've been on television elsewhere this morning defending this
02:08 and saying that these are civil service numbers
02:11 and that they were not by political advisers.
02:13 Is it time to apologise?
02:14 No, absolutely not. So, actually, what the letter says
02:19 is that you can look on gov.uk and costings are done
02:22 by government departments, the Treasury,
02:23 and those are official costings.
02:25 And, again, if I just come back to the biggest number that we've used...
02:29 The letter says that the figure that was being used
02:32 should not have been used and said it came from the civil service.
02:36 That's what the letter says. I've got it in black and white in front of me.
02:40 Hang on, if you read the first couple of lines,
02:42 people can look online, there is an official document on gov.uk
02:46 which has been costed by Treasury officials,
02:48 which the letter confirms.
02:50 And, as I can say, someone who used to work in the Treasury,
02:53 Treasury officials do not sign off dodgy numbers.
02:55 They're very smart people,
02:56 they're independent, impartial civil servants,
02:58 and you cannot put something on gov.uk
03:01 if it has not been signed off by the Treasury,
03:03 which the letter also confirms.
03:04 But the poor point here is that this is all base.
03:07 Claire Coutinho, the letter agrees that the costings
03:10 which were produced by the HM Treasury and the Civil Service
03:13 are published on the website,
03:14 but the letter goes on to say, as you will expect,
03:18 "Civil servants were not involved in the production or presentation
03:22 "of the Conservative Party's document Labour's Tax Rises
03:26 "or in the calculation of the total figure used."
03:31 I agree, any costings derived from other sources
03:34 or produced by other organisations should not be presented
03:37 as having been produced by the Civil Service.
03:41 Well, look, I agree that they didn't put together a document
03:45 called Labour's Tax Rises, but they did come up
03:47 with the costings, which is on gov.uk,
03:49 which, again, as I said, the letter confirms.
03:51 But just to come back to a major point,
03:52 which I think people will really want to understand,
03:55 is that the biggest amount that we've used to come up
03:57 with that £2,000 figure is a Labour number of £23.7 billion
04:02 over the course of the next Parliament.
04:04 And as I said, that is probably an underestimate
04:07 of what Ed Miliband's Green plans will mean
04:10 in cost for the country.
04:11 And again, that's using Labour statements,
04:13 because what they said in the past
04:15 is it would cost £28 billion a year,
04:17 but we haven't used that.
04:19 We've accepted their new watering down of the figure,
04:21 even though they've kept all of the same policies in place.
04:24 So actually, this £2,000 a year is probably a vast
04:27 underestimation of what the Labour Party will cost families.