• 6 months ago
Rishi Sunak has denied Keir Starmer's accusation that the Prime Minister lied about Labour's tax plans, in an exclusive interview with ITV's Tonight programme.

Asked whether he was willing to lie in order to stay in power, Mr Sunak said "No."

He added that Keir Starmer's inference that the Prime Minister was a 'liar' was "pretty desperate stuff". Report by Alibhaiz. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Transcript
00:00 OK, let's talk about tax, because it has been a big issue in the past couple of days, right?
00:04 I think everyone would agree. Are you willing to lie in order to stay in power?
00:09 No.
00:10 The Labour Party say you're a liar.
00:11 Yeah, I think it's pretty desperate stuff. And Keir Starmer and the Labour Party are
00:15 obviously very rattled that we've exposed their plans to raise tax on people. And that's
00:20 what it demonstrates.
00:23 Your claim is dubious. You know it's dubious.
00:24 No, I don't. I think people know that. I'm across the detail when it comes to numbers.
00:28 The Chancellor gave a press conference on this very topic almost a month ago, where
00:32 he laid out all the workings behind what we were saying. And I'm happy to go through it.
00:36 His permanent secretary at the Treasury said, do not use this to claim that civil servants
00:41 have crunched these numbers.
00:42 No, no, that's not right.
00:44 That's the letter that's been published.
00:45 I can tell you exactly. I'm happy to go through it with you. There are 27 different policies
00:50 that go into this number. 21 of them have been costed independently by Treasury officials.
00:55 They're all online and people can find them. Two of them come direct from the Labour Party.
00:59 Three of them from other public government sources. And one of them's from an independent
01:04 investment bank. That's where all the workings come from.
01:06 Will you at least be upfront about the fact that this is based on Conservative advisers
01:10 putting together the initial input?
01:12 No, that what the analysis and the working is done by Treasury officials. They are formed
01:17 on things that Conservative advisers have asked them to look at.
01:20 It's all transparent. It's all laid out online.
01:23 People can go and read it online.
01:24 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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