Billionaire businessman Surinder Arora warns Labour tax plans could scare businesses away from UK
Billionaire businessman Surinder Arora has hit out at Labour’s plans to increase taxation on corporations and wealthy individuals, saying the proposals could drive businesses and investors away from the UK.
Arora – who came to the UK from Punjab at the age of 12 before establishing hotel operator Arora Group – warned a Labour victory at the upcoming General Election may lead to businesses and investors leaving the country.
Labour’s manifesto includes plans to increase taxes on corporations and the top five per cent of earners.
In an interview with Sky News Arora, who is worth an estimated £1.129bn, said: “If you’re going to scare businesses, multinationals, all the big companies and billionaires and other people, if you give out the wrong message, then what do they do?
“In this day and age, people just pack their bags and say, I’ll go somewhere else and invest my money elsewhere. Do we really want that as a country? I think that’s wrong.”
In response, a Labour spokesperson said: “Billionaires complaining about paying their fair share to fund the public services we all rely on shows why we need real change.”
Labour’s tax plans have been criticised by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which said the policy would increase taxes for nearly 2m people before the end of Corbyn’s first full term but said the amount it would raise was ‘highly uncertain’.
However, a group of economists, including former Bank of England monetary policy committee member David Blanchflower, lent their support to Corbyn’s Labour Party in a letter to the Financial Times last week.