Yvette Cooper MP: Conservatives have given massive tax cuts to the richest people in the country

Yvette Cooper MP writes: Time and again Conservative ministers have taken the same approach – when everyone is under pressure, they give big tax cuts to the richest people in the country, claiming it will somehow trickle down to help everyone else. Instead the opposite happens and our economy keeps getting worse.

In this budget the current Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak and chancellor Jeremy Hunt just decided that their top tax priority in the middle of the cost of living crisis was to spend around a billion pounds on cutting taxes on the massive pension pots of the wealthiest people in the country. Some people could get over £40,000 in a tax cut – that’s more than most people earn in a year. It won’t help families who can’t put food on the table or small shops and businesses who are closing down because they can’t cover their bills.

The last Conservative prime minister and chancellor Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng took the same approach and went even further. Last autumn they tried a massive tax cut for the highest paid people in the country while everyone else was paying more. The result was they crashed the markets, hit pension funds and pushed up mortgage rates. Many families round here are now paying nearly £2,000 a year more on their mortgage as a result.

And their predecessors have done the same thing. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak refused to get rid of non dom tax breaks for the richest people in the country who live here but register overseas so they pay less tax. And David Cameron and George Osborne gave top earners billions of pounds of tax cuts while imposing austerity and tax credit cuts on everyone else.

Time and again, when things get tough, the Conservatives decide to make it worse for everyone else but to cut taxes and give more support to the people who need it least. Yet this “trickle down” approach has badly failed, is bad for the economy and is deeply unfair on everyone else who is working hard to keep Britain going.

Over the last 13 years while Conservative Ministers have been pursuing “trickle down” our economy has got weaker and weaker. Britain’s growth is just half what it used to be. This managed decline has put Britain behind in the global race for the industries of the future.

It doesn’t have to be like this. We should be leading the pack with the highest growth in the G7. Instead of trickle down, we should be growing our economy from the bottom up. We should be backing our small businesses with cuts to business rates and more start-up support. We should be supporting our talent with new training, and a proper industrial strategy. We should be championing green manufacturing and jobs of the future. There should be a proper plan.

Our towns have a proud manufacturing history. We’ve always played our part in the country’s economic growth. We deserve better than this. Change can’t come soon enough.