Lord Clarke warns Jeremy Hunt over ‘buying votes’ with Budget tax cuts

Tory peer urges Chancellor to prioritise Britain’s lack of investment and ‘poor productivity record’

Lord Clarke has warned Jeremy Hunt not to attempt to “buy votes” by cutting taxes in the Budget on Wednesday.
The former Tory chancellor said he was “fed up” with speculation about tax cuts as he urged Mr Hunt to prioritise investment and do more to reverse a collapse in productivity.
Britain’s tax burden is at its heaviest since the Second World War, and taxes as a share of GDP are on track to hit a new post-war high of almost 38 per cent by 2029.
Asked by Times Radio what he would put in the Budget, Lord Clarke replied: “I hope I would set out to produce a competent, responsible Budget that looked to give us some hope of recovering over the next two or three years from the recession that we are in, the economic crisis that we are in, to get us back on the path towards growth and with low inflation.
“I’m quite fed up with all this speculation in the newspapers and supposed briefings and gossip about how we are going to buy votes through this tax cut, that tax cut.
“What people want to be reassured about is that there is some prospect of our getting back to the kind of growth with low inflation that, as we know, steadily improves public services and our daily way of life.
“And so the main things to tackle are the things that are at the root of the recession and a failure for us to grow significantly for the last two or three years – that’s our lack of investment and our very poor productivity record.”
The UK’s productivity was almost 20 per cent lower than that of the United States in 2021, while public sector productivity rose by less than four per cent between 1997 and 2019.
Conservative MPs on the Right of the party have urged Mr Hunt and Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, to deliver a range of sweeping tax cuts on Wednesday to improve their prospects at the general election.
On Sunday, Liz Truss, Mr Sunak’s predecessor, called on him to scrap stamp duty, while Dame Priti Patel, a former home secretary, joined forces with dozens of other Tory MPs to demand the abolition of the “tourist tax”.
Almost half of the public (49 per cent) now associate the Conservatives with high taxation, a recent poll by Survation showed, while just 29 per cent consider them a low-tax party.
Lord Clarke also suggested he would support changes to non-dom status after The Telegraph revealed that Mr Hunt is considering whether to scrap the regime to fund tax cuts for millions of workers.
Challenged on whether he would support the move, the Tory peer said: “I think I would look at that. I’m not sure it would raise a great deal of money, and it will deter quite a lot of very wealthy overseas citizens from coming here.
“I don’t mind deterring the people who avoid their own tax authorities at home by buying a hugely expensive flat in Chelsea, which they only live in for about a fortnight a year. But some people come here and do conduct business and do add to our economy.
“So it’s a fringe thing, but non-dom status is difficult to justify and it does create resentment that people of the most enormous wealth live here and pay no tax whatever on any income they start accumulating here.”
In an interview with The Telegraph last weekend, Mr Hunt acknowledged the public had “come to the limit of how high they’re prepared to see their taxes go” and said it was a “moral imperative” to let people keep as much of their own money as possible.
But despite doubling down on his wish to cut taxes, the Chancellor insisted this would only be done “in a responsible way and in a way that supports economic growth”.