Rishi Sunak has set set out plans for a 2p national insurance to get the Tory General Election campaign back on track
Launching the Tory Manifesto at the Silverstone race track Sunak said that he was not “blind to the fact that people are frustrated with our party and frustrated with me” and “we have not got everything right”
However he insisted his is the only party “with the big ideas to make our country a better place to live”
He added that the party will recover “levels of efficiency” in public services when asked about the lack of measures to avoid the cuts to public spending implied by his plans, adding he does not want “people’s taxes to have to go up when we can get efficiencies to fund them”
Sunak said that “There is a clear choice at this election, we are the only party putting bold action on the table to transform our country”
The Manifesto included few suprises.There was a promise to build 1.6m new homes over the term of the Government and a promise to halve immigration and to take on 8,000 new police officers
Sunak promised to have lower welfare so that they can deliver lower taxes,” and this will include tougher sanctions’ on benefits and the introduction of the household benefit cap and the two-child limit.
The Tories would introduce a £1bn scheme, modelled on Help to Buy, to allow people to buy a home with a 5% deposit.
They also pledged to abolish stamp duty permanently for first-time buyers purchasing a property costing less than £425,000.
There was also a commitment to abolish national insurance contributions for the self employed over the next five years
Analysis by the Resolution Foundation found that the manifesto proposals would mean tax cuts of £170 for a typical employee, but these plans rest on £33 billion of spending cuts in order to get debt falling.
Social Market Foundation Director Theo Bertram said:
“This is a manifesto without credibility or identity, focused on the next three weeks not the future. Where previous Tory manifestos have been short and clear, whether on austerity or Brexit, this is a scattergun of pledges without a coherent plan or consistent narrative. We have reached the awkward point in the break-up between the Conservative government and the British public, where the Tories are embarrassing themselves with promises to be different in future, when the public has long since made up their mind it is over.”
