LABOUR MP Luke Murphy has said that Chancellor Rachel Reeves is working on easing the cost of living with measures that will be announced in November’s Budget.
He said, during the Camilla Tominey Show on GB News: “What my constituents are worried about, and I hear it on the door, week in, week out, I had several conversations last weekend with several constituents about the cost of living and the pressures that they’re facing, whether it’s with energy prices or food prices or anything else
“What I want to see in the Budget, and I know what Rachel and the Government are focused on, is easing that cost of living and getting growth back in our economy.
“We are only going to be able to have the investment in the public services that we all rely on, that we need, invest in the security to protect our country, and to ensure that people have more money in their pockets if we get growth in the economy.”
He added: “I know that the government is steadfast in those commitments in the manifesto to ensure that there’s no increase in VAT, there’s no increase in income tax, on national insurance, on working people and on my constituents.
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“What I don’t support, because I’ve heard several calls from the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and Reform to cancel our national the National Insurance increase that was made last year, to cancel a load of other taxes, and then to go further, to have billions of, tens of billions of pounds of cuts in spending, as well as unfunded tax cuts like scrapping Stamp Duty.
“That is a path to a higher cost of living for my constituents. It is unfunded tax cuts that led to interest rates rising.”
Asked if he was ruling out tax rises in the Budget, he said: “What Rachel Reeves will do in the Budget, and what the Government is seeking to do, is to ensure that we have growth in the economy, that we provide the investment that our public services need.
“One of the things, and one of the reasons I was elected in the General Election was because our National Health Service did not have the funding that it needed. People couldn’t see a GP, they couldn’t get the hospital appointment. We’re beginning to turn that around.
“Of course, this government absolutely wants to see people have more money in their pocket, and that is an absolutely central tenet of what this government is trying to achieve. But we will not do things that undermine the stability in our economy, or make unfunded commitments, which previous governments have done and all of the opposition parties are now doing.
“While that’s a difficult choice, if you have an unfunded tax cut that you cannot pay for, that undermines the economy and will lead to increases in interest rates, which we saw had a massive impact on my constituents over the last few years.”
