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Rishi Sunak’s claim that Labour would put up household taxes by £2,000 suffered a serious blow on Wednesday, when the figure was undermined by the chief civil servant at the Treasury.
James Bowler, Treasury permanent secretary, poured cold water on Sunak’s claim made in a fiery television debate with Sir Keir Starmer that the figure was based on independent analysis of Labour’s plans by civil servants.
Bowler wrote to Darren Jones, shadow Treasury chief secretary, to say that the figures used by Sunak “include costs beyond those provided by the civil service and published online by HM Treasury”.
He added in the letter dated June 3: “I agree that any costings derived from other sources or produced by other organisations should not be presented as having been produced by the civil service. I have reminded ministers and advisers that this should be the case.”
Sunak sought to throw Starmer off guard during the ITV televised debate by repeating a claim — more than 10 times — that a Labour government would put up taxes by £2,000 per household.
That number comes from a calculation that Labour firmly rejected three weeks ago, when Jeremy Hunt, the Tory chancellor, claimed that Starmer’s spending plans had a £38bn fiscal hole.
Claire Coutinho, energy secretary, repeated the claim on Wednesday that this would mean a tax rise of more than £2,000 for every household, although she admitted that was a cumulative total over four years, not an annual figure.
Starmer allowed Sunak to repeat the allegation on numerous occasions in the ITV debate in Manchester before denouncing it as “absolute garbage”; his delay in closing it down made the claim a central feature of the first TV debate of the campaign.
Coutinho told the BBC: “That £2,000 of taxes on working families has been costed by Treasury officials.” She added: “This is something that has been signed off by the permanent secretary of the Treasury as the amount of the proposals the Labour party has put forward so far.”
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A spokesman for Sunak said the Treasury “calculated a large part of the policy costings” while the rest were based on work by the Institute for Government think-tank, adding that the prime minister had not specifically said that the Treasury had signed off the £2,000 figure.
The spokesman added that the £38bn figure that underlay the tax calculation was “fair” to Labour and based on the lowest assumptions of what its policies could cost.
Treasury analysis of opposition policies is a familiar — but highly contentious — feature of political life. Impartial civil servants are asked to produce costings of policies based on instructions from political advisers.
Starmer said the exercise was based on giving “pretend Labour policies to the Treasury and then they get a false readout”. He said all of his promises were fully costed.
Lord Nick Macpherson, former Treasury permanent secretary, said last year: “Costing opposition policies is the most depressing task to befall Treasury officials. Since political advisers determine the assumptions, garbage in leads to garbage out.”
Jonathan Ashworth, shadow cabinet minister, said on Wednesday that Sunak’s claim was “a desperate lie”, as Labour tried to close down the debate.
A snap poll by YouGov in the immediate aftermath of the debate gave Sunak a narrow 51/49 point lead over Starmer when viewers were asked who they thought had won the debate.
The prime minister’s punchy performance raised spirits in a Conservative campaign struggling to gain momentum and make inroads into Labour’s 20-point opinion poll lead ahead of the July 4 election.
However, a separate poll by Savanta published on Wednesday found that 44 per cent of people thought Starmer won the debate, compared with 39 per cent who thought Sunak was the victor.
Both sides are now engaged in a furious battle over the fallout from the debate — the first of two head-to-heads scheduled between the two leaders — with tax now at the centre of the election campaign.