Tory minister left squirming after being told his party had put up taxes by £13,000 per household since last election

The Tories also seem to forget that they have raised taxes to their highest level in 70 years.

Mel Stride

A Tory minister has been left squirming after being told that his party had put up taxes by £13,000 per household since the last election.

Work and pensions secretary Mel Stride was confronted by Kay Burley on Sky News with the figure. It comes after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak falsely claimed during a head-to-head debate with Keir Starmer that the Labour Party would hike household taxes by £2,000.

His claim is untrue and the Treasury has written to Darren Jones, the shadow chief secretary – making it clear the £2,000 figure “should not be presented as having been produced by the civil service.”

Using the same method that the Conservatives used to accuse Labour of planning to hike taxes by £2,000 per family, Sky’s Economics Editor Ed Conway, calculated that there had been a £13,000 increase per household in taxes since the last election.

Burley said to Stride: “[Ed Conway] found that since 2019, we’ve all experienced £13,000 of extras in taxes if we were to add things up the same way you’ve added things up for Labour.

“So in other words, the Tories have cost us an extra £13,000 extra in taxes since the last election. It’s a lot more than £2,000, isn’t it?”

Caught completely off guard, Stride replied: “It’s another number out of context.”

The Tories also seem to forget that they have raised taxes to their highest level in 70 years.

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

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