A curious attack from Labour in the Commons this afternoon: shadow work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall used her slot at the regular departmental questions to ask how a policy that the government doesn’t yet have would work. She referred to the statements made by the Chancellor and the Prime Minister about their ambition over the long term to scrap National Insurance as a ‘double taxation’, pointing out:

Labour obviously thinks that talk of abolishing national insurance is a way into the pensioner vote

‘Your NICs record helps determine your entitlement to the state pension. So if that’s scrapped, how will people know what pension they will get?’

Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride insisted that this was not yet policy, saying:

‘She will know very clearly in her own mind that the Chancellor has not guaranteed that we will be reducing at one stroke national insurance contributions, it is an aspiration, it has been spoken about as occurring over a number of years if not parliaments. The problems that she’s conjuring up to frighten pensioners is nothing short of political scaremongering.’

Kendall accused him of ‘bluster’, and came back with the same question:

‘How will people’s pension entitlement be determined if NICs are scrapped? And if they’re going to merge NICs with income tax, what does that mean for pensioner tax bills? Isn’t the truth their unfunded £46bn plan to scrap NICs is yet more chaos from the Conservatives and Britain’s pensioners deserve so much better than this?’

Stride responded again that this was ‘not the same as a near-term pledge: it is a long-term aspiration’, and added that this was quite unlike Labour’s £28 billion green pledge.

So what’s going on here? Labour obviously thinks that talk of abolishing national insurance is a way into the pensioner vote – which tends to gravitate towards the Conservatives.

QOSHE - Has Labour spied an opportunity in the Tory National Insurance pledge? - Isabel Hardman
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Has Labour spied an opportunity in the Tory National Insurance pledge?

6 1
18.03.2024

A curious attack from Labour in the Commons this afternoon: shadow work and pensions secretary Liz Kendall used her slot at the regular departmental questions to ask how a policy that the government doesn’t yet have would work. She referred to the statements made by the Chancellor and the Prime Minister about their ambition over the long term to scrap National Insurance as a ‘double taxation’, pointing out:

Labour obviously thinks that talk of abolishing national insurance is a........

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