It takes some to get used to Labour posing as the party of low taxes, but it is something that we are going to have to deal with as the election approaches. Today Jeremy Hunt appeared before the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, and we had a taste of what is to come. In a fairly docile but highly partisan session, Labour MP Siobhain McDonagh asked the Chancellor if he takes the British public for fools, asking if he thinks they will not notice that the 2p cut in employees’ National Insurance will put rather less back into their pockets than fiscal drag is taking out – Hunt is ‘gouging with one hand and giving crumbs back with the other’, as she put it. She then asked him: was the 40 per cent tax rate really designed to hit nurses, teachers and police officers?
Hunt, unsurprisingly, chose not answer this, preferring to waffle on about an earlier point he had made that his tax cuts had been designed to promote growth. But
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