Jeremy Hunt will promise more tax cuts if the Conservatives win the next general election and accuse the Labor Party of not being honest about how it will finance its spending promises.
The chancellor will give a speech in London on Friday, in which she will accuse her shadow, Rachel Reeves, of resorting to “recreational politics” with her criticism of the high levels of taxation on British families.
Mr Hunt will also reiterate his ambition to scrap the national insurance tax – which the Tories have already cut twice in an attempt to change the polls – where it is currently 20 points behind the Labor Party.
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The Labor Party attacked the policy as a £46 billion unfunded pledge and compared it to the policies that led to Liz Truss resigning from her role after just 44 days as Prime Minister.
The Chancellor was previously forced to make clear that his desire to abolish the “unfair” national security tax would It won’t happen “any time soon”.
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The chancellor described national insurance as a “tax on work” and said he believed it was “unfair for us to tax work twice” when other forms of income are taxed just once.
The global tax burden is expected to rise over the next five years to around 37% of gross domestic product – close to the post-Second World War maximum – but Mr Hunt will argue that the furlough scheme introduced during the pandemic and aid that the government gave to families for heating that both needed to be paid for.
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“Labour likes to criticize tax rises in this parliament thinking people don’t know why they have risen – the furlough scheme, the energy price guarantee and billions of pounds of cost of living support, policies that Labor itself supported”, he will say.
“That’s why it’s policy to use these tax rises to divert debate from the biggest divide in British politics – which is what happens next.
“The Conservatives recognize that while these tax rises may have been necessary, they should not be permanent. Labor does not.”
James Murray, Labor Party shadow financial secretary at the Treasury, said: “There is nothing Jeremy Hunt can say or do to hide the fact that working people are worse off after 14 years of economic failure under the Tories.”
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