Jeremy Hunt challenged over consecutive Tory VAT increases in tense live interviewSource: BBC Radio 4 Today
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 I'm hearing your point there. You attack the Labour Party. We'll do tax and then spend if we could.
00:05 You attack the Labour Party this morning and say they've got a secret plan to increase VAT.
00:10 Which party put VAT up to 15%?
00:13 We may well have put up...
00:16 Which party then put it up to 17.5%?
00:18 I'll let you make your point because you've let me make my point. So you go right ahead, Nick, and enjoy yourself.
00:22 Which party then increased it to 20%? Every increase in VAT there's been in your lifetime,
00:28 political lifetime. Thatcher, Major and Cameron, they were increased by Conservative governments.
00:34 I am not pretending that there haven't been times when Conservative governments
00:38 haven't put up taxes. What I am saying is one of the big divides, and you talked about all the
00:43 the hurly-burly of an election campaign, and you rightly on the Today programme try to
00:48 distill it down to what the real choices are. Well here is the real choice in this election campaign.
00:53 A Conservative government wants to bring down the tax burden, and we've already started with
00:58 the four pence off national insurance, £900 for the average earner. A Labour government will keep
01:04 taxes as they are. In fact we believe they will have to increase taxes because they have £38
01:10 billion of spending in the next parliament they're committed to.