THE chief secretary to the Treasury has insisted the Government’s economic plan will benefit all and not just the rich.
Chris Philp told GB News: “Firstly, if you look at the growth plan measures announced by the Chancellor last Friday, most of those measures were things like cutting the basic rate of income tax, reversing the National Insurance increase, reducing or keeping low taxes on companies.
“The energy intervention was very important as well, we’re making sure that people don’t suffer those £5,000, £6,000, £7,000 bills, which was the fear just a few weeks ago. We’ve made sure the British public don’t suffer from those terrible energy bills.”
“Almost everything in that package was targeted at the whole country, not just a few people, that’s the first point to make.
“The second point to make on the 45p specifically, is that we want to make sure the United Kingdom is internationally competitive for personal tax and for corporate tax, because many companies and also very successful people, have a choice about where they locate, they don’t have to come to the UK, they could locate in New York, or they could locate in Singapore.
“We want to make sure they choose to come and grow in the United Kingdom, which is good for our economy, it’ll create extra jobs, and ultimately pay more tax revenues to fund the NHS education and the police as well, so that is the rationale for doing it.”
On the financial turmoil, speaking during Breakfast on GB News, he said: “The Bank of England yesterday used their independent powers to make a very specific targeted and time-limited intervention in a rather technical part of the market.
“It was the long end of the guilt curve, and the way that interacted with certain kinds of very particular pension funds. They did that and it was successful.
“Other central banks in recent days have intervened as well, the Bank of Japan just a few days ago made a very particular intervention in the yen dollar market. ”
He added: “Inflation has been a problem globally, interest rates have been rising globally for the last six or nine months. And in fact, they’ve gone up by more in the United States than they have here.
“What we can do as a government is make sure that we protect British citizens from the worst effects of the energy crisis, which we did without decisive intervention protecting every single British household and British business.
“We’ve made sure we’ve got a growing economy to make sure wages are rising. That’s our responsibility. And that’s what the Prime Minister and Chancellor have been doing in the last couple of weeks.”
