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Rishi Sunak’s claim that tax would rise by £2,000 under a Labour government has “little to no relation to reality”, an expert cited by the Conservatives as evidence has said.
Nick Davies, programme director at the Institute of Government, said: I They argued that his interpretation of the work was “misleading” and “neither independent nor impartial.”
Mr Sunak made the claim during the first general election debate with Sir Keir Starmer, who initially did not deny it but later called it “nonsense”.
The tax bill is based in part on Davies’s research into the cost of cutting outsourcing within government, and the Conservatives have used this analysis to argue that Labour’s previous pledges would cost £6.5bn in the next parliament and would need to be paid for by a tax increase totalling £2,000.
During the debate, Mr Sunak insisted the analysis was based on independent analysis by the Treasury, but on Wednesday morning it emerged that Treasury officials had not backed up the Conservatives’ claims.
In a letter to Labor’s Darren Jones, permanent secretary to the Treasury, James Bowler, said the figures “should not be presented as having been produced by civil servants”.
Mr Davies’s research had been cited by Angela Rayner to estimate the total cost of the government’s pledges to reduce the amount of outsourcing, made by her predecessor as shadow minister.
Davis said: I“As I understand it, the £2,000 tax figure is based on analysis carried out by civil servants in the Treasury last month, and which ministers insist is an independent analysis.”
“But these assumptions were made by special advisers who were neither independent nor impartial and who provided inflated figures that bear little relationship to reality.”
“On outsourcing, these figures calculate that it would cost a significant amount to bring services in-house. Labour’s policy is quite vague at the moment, and the Conservatives have assumed Labour will insource 50% of contracts that end each year, and multiplied that by the 7.5% assumed cost increase they took from our report.”
“They took limited data, extrapolated it in wild ways and multiplied it by incredible numbers to come up with huge figures.”
Mr. Davis I The practice of incumbent governments exaggerating the costs of opposition policies before elections must end.
“This is misleading and unfortunately has been a practice of many governments, including Labour, and it would be better if all parties in power stopped doing this.”
Conservative campaign officials argued that Treasury intervention had not weakened the party’s attacks on Labour. I“HMT is just saying they didn’t package the figures. They created the items and we added to them.”
The Conservatives also slammed Labour for claiming the government has £71 billion of unfunded policies. A source said: “It’s pretty bold to call someone a liar and then in the next sentence claim the Conservatives will abolish National Insurance and Inheritance Tax in April.”
The Conservative Party has been approached for comment.