Taxes

Sam Carling Excerpts

Wednesday 12th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mel Stride]

Well, he may or may not be—it remains to be seen.

What all this ends up with, of course, is lost fiscal headroom. That is the story so far. We had a Budget last October with about £10 billion against the debt target; that vanishes, with 50% on top as well. It is rebuilt in the spring, and now it has all disappeared, and we are waiting to find out how deep that black hole is. We have entered something of a doom loop, with higher taxes destroying growth, leading to a loss of fiscal headroom, requiring—in the Chancellor’s terms at least—further tax increases, leading to further destruction of growth, and around and around we go.

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

The shadow Chancellor has spent a lot of time in his speech talking about what people have said and done. I wonder if I could remind him that just a month ago he said that if he were in the Chancellor’s position, he would raise income tax. How does he square that with the speech he is currently giving?

[Sir Mel Stride]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has given me an opportunity to correct the record, because I know this has been spun by the Labour party. At a fringe meeting at the Conservative party conference, there was a long, extended debate about just how bad things are, with speculations about all the “what ifs” and “maybes” of different scenarios. If the hon. Gentleman reads the full transcript of those exchanges, he will see that the point I was very clearly making was that there is an alternative to putting up taxes, which is controlling spending. That is the point I was making.

What is happening to the wealth creators in our country? About 16,000 of them have fled—they are going by the day. These are the people who generate the wealth, jobs and growth that we are all striving to achieve. Look at the cumulative tax take that has just walked out of the door with the 16,000 who have gone—it would probably require a third of a million to half a million people on average earnings to fill that gap. It is not sustainable.

There is an alternative. The Conservatives set out this alternative at our party conference: a way forward through control of Government spending. Government spending could be controlled to the tune of at least £47 billion, which were the savings we identified. Of the £47 billion, £23 billion can be found from the welfare budget by getting people off benefits and into work. It is better for the economy, but equally, for those who have mild mental health conditions such as mild anxiety, mild depression and ADHD, it is a better outcome than parking them on benefits, which the Government are doing through time. By focusing on actual need rather than simply transfer payments and on medical diagnosis rather than self-assessments and by not paying benefits to non-UK citizens, we can make real savings. In some cases they are tough choices, absolutely. However, these are decisions that the Government have made.