Tories’ ‘triple lock plus’ planned tax cut for pensioners a ‘desperate move’ says Labour – UK politics live | Politics

Labour has opened applications for a string of new safe seats after half a dozen MPs announced last-minute retirements, with key allies of Keir Starmer expected to be lined up to take their place.

Those standing down include the former shadow minister Barbara Keeley, the chair of the parliamentary Labour party Jon Cryer, as well as John Spellar, Virendra Sharma and Kevin Brennan.

Julie Elliott, the MP for Sunderland Central, joined the ranks of those retiring on this morning. Senior Labour sources said they anticipate there could be several more departures announced in the next 24 hours.

The party is also advertising a number of other safe seats in London, including Stratford and Bow and West Ham and Beckton.

A number of senior Labour figures are widely expected to seek a seat in the coming days, including Josh Simons, the director of the highly influential pro-Starmer thinktank Labour First, and Georgia Gould, leader of Camden council.

Members of the party’s ruling national executive committee who have been instrumental in transforming its rules in the aftermath of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership are also tipped for seats. Those include Luke Akehurst, Gurinder Singh Josan, Abdi Duale and the party’s national executive commitee’s chair James Asser.

The move will trigger controversy from critics who argue that Labour candidates – particularly those in plum seats – should be selected with local input from grassroots members, and not simply handed to allies of the leadership.

In February 2020, while he was campaigning for the Labour leadership, Starmer said that “the selections for Labour candidates needs to be more democratic and we should end NEC impositions of candidates. Local party members should select their candidates for every election.”

Starmer added then that “there should be no power without accountability, and true accountability requires transparency”.

Labour figures argue that special circumstances are triggered once an election is called and candidates must be quickly put in place.

To coincide with the Rachel Reeves speech, 120 business leaders have signed a letter published in the Times backing Labour. The paper has splashed on the news.

In his story, Steven Swinford says:

The signatories, who include senior figures from the City, entrepreneurs, investors, high-profile figures from the world of technology and leading retailers, say change is needed “to achieve the UK’s full economic potential”.

The letter is signed by past and present executives from JP Morgan, Heathrow, Aston Martin, JD Sports, Iceland and the advertising giant WPP. Sir Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, and Tom Kerridge, the restaurateur, have also signed the letter, along with the founder of a childcare company in which the prime minister’s wife previously held shares.

It represents the culmination of years intense lobbying by Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, and Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, as they seek to position Labour as the party of business before the general election.

In their letter, the business leaders indicate that they are backing Labour not because of any specific policy pledge, but because Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are offering stablity. They say for too long the economy has been “beset by instability, stagnation and a lack of long-term focus”. They say they are backing Labour because it will “partner fiscal discipline with a long-term growth strategy, working in partnership with the private sector”.

Here is the text of the letter in full.

We, as leaders and investors in British business, believe it is time for a change. For too long, our economy has been beset by instability, stagnation and a lack of long-term focus.

The UK has the potential to be one of the strongest economies in the world. A lack of political stability and the absence of consistent economic strategy have held it back. The country has been denied the skills and infrastructure it needs to flourish.

We are looking for a government that will partner fiscal discipline with a long-term growth strategy, working in partnership with the private sector to drive innovation and investment to build digital and physical capital and fix our skills system. This is the only way to put us on track for sustained productivity growth.

Labour has shown it has changed and wants to work with business to achieve the UK’s full economic potential. We should now give it the chance to change the country and lead Britain into the future. We are in urgent need of a new outlook to break free from the stagnation of the past decade and we hope by taking this public stand we might persuade others of that need too.

Rachel Reeves will this morning give a speech pledging to lead the most “pro-growth” Treasury in UK history if Labour wins the general election, Anna Isaac reports.

Good morning. Earlier this month Rishi Sunak had a difficult encounter with Janet Street-Porter on Loose Women when she claimed the Tories hated pensioners. Her argument was based on the fact that pensioners would not benefit from the national insurance cut in the budget (because pensioners don’t pay national insurance), and it totally ignored the fact that overall pensioners have gained considerably since the Tories have been in power because of the triple lock, but viewers may have concluded that pensioners had a legitimate grievance against the Conservatives.

Today, in their second big policy announcement of the election campaign, the Tories have announced plans for a £2.4bn tax cut for pensioners intended to win back the Street-Porter vote. Pensioners will get a personal tax allowance that will always rise in line with the triple lock, so that the allowance will always be higher than the state pension. This is how the Conservative party explains it in their news release.

Having cut tax for working people by reducing national insurance from 12% to 8%, the Conservatives will now cut tax for pensioners. Today, the Conservatives announced that from April they will increase the personal allowance for pensioners in line with the triple lock by introducing a new age-related allowance.

That means that for pensioners, both the state pension and their tax-free allowance will always rise in line with the highest of earnings, wages or 2.5%: the new triple lock plus.

This is a tax cut of around £100 for 8 million pensioners next year, which will only grow over time – expected to be almost £300 a year by the end of the parliament. It comes alongside the Conservatives’ existing commitment to the triple lock, which on current forecasts will see the state pension rise by £430 next April – and by around £1,700 a year by the end of the parliament.

The landmark announcement will guarantee in legislation that the pensioners’ personal allowance will always be higher than the level of the new state pension.

The policy will cost £2.4bn a year by 29/30 and be funded through the Conservatives’ previously announced plan to raise an extra £6bn a year by the end of the next parliament by clamping down on tax avoidance and evasion.

In a comment on the plan, Sunak says:

This bold action demonstrates we are on the side of pensioners. The alternative is Labour dragging everyone in receipt of the full state pension into income tax for the first time in history.

The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express have splashed on the story approvingly.

But Labour has described the plan as a “desperate move” and revived its claim that the Tory proposal to get rid of national insurance over the long term would mean pensions would have to be cut. The Tories claim this is a false smear.

Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow Cabinet Office minister, said:

Why would anyone believe the Tories and Rishi Sunak on tax after they left the country with the highest tax burden in 70 years?

This is just another desperate move from a chaotic Tory party torching any remaining facade of its claims to economic credibility.

Not only have they promised to spend tens of billions of pounds since this campaign began, they also have a completely unfunded £46bn policy to scrap national insurance that threatens the very basis of the state pension.

Commenting on the plan on X, Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, said that the Tories were, in practice, reinstating a special tax allowance for pensioners that they themselves scrapped, under George Osborne, and that half the saving pensioners would get was just the result of their not having to pay a tax increase already in the pipeline.

About half the cost of this is just not imposing the planned tax increase (via 3 more years of freezing allowances) on pensioners. So the £100 “saving” next year is mostly just avoiding a £100 tax increase, rather than an actual giveaway.

NB it was George Osborne who got rid of the higher tax allowance for pensioners. Now want to bring it back. But at a lower level than it was in 2010. Like corporation tax, pension lifetime allowance, personal allowance, another example of total lack of consistency in tax policy

Here is the agenda for the day.

10am: Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, gives a speech in the East Midlands, followed by a Q&A with journalists.

10am: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK honorary president, is campaigning in Dover.

10.10am: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, does a campaign visit with Tim Farron at Windermere.

10.30am: Douglas Ross, the Scottish Tory leader, launches the Scottish Tory election campaign in Perth.

10.30am: Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, is on a visit in East Renfrewshire.

11am: Rishi Sunak is taking part in a Q&A with workers in Staffordshire.

Afternoon: Keir Starmer takes part in a Q&A with workers

If you want to contact me, please post a message below the line (BTL) or message me on X (Twitter). I can’t read all the messages BTL, but if you put “Andrew” in a message aimed at me, I am more likely to see it because I search for posts containing that word. If you want to flag something up urgently, it is best to use X; I’ll see something addressed to @AndrewSparrow very quickly. I find it very helpful when readers point out mistakes, even minor typos (no error is too small to correct). And I find your questions very interesting too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either BTL or sometimes in the blog.