Election 2024: Rishi Sunak pledges National Insurance cut in Tory manifesto
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Rishi Sunak has pledged to “keep cutting National Insurance until it’s gone” as he unveiled the Conservative Party’s general election manifesto.
The Prime Minister took to the stage at Silverstone racetrack in Northamptonshire to unveil his party’s suite of policies ahead of the ballot on July 4.
Speaking to an audience of his cabinet ministers and Conservative candidates, journalists and party activists, Sunak said the launch – hosted at the home of the British Grand Prix – showed that “our economy has truly turned a corner” and that his party’s policies would ensure “more British success stories”.
The manifesto document stated: “Our long-term ambition, when it is affordable to do so, is to keep cutting National Insurance until it is gone, as part of our plan to make the tax system simpler and fairer.
“As the next step in that plan, we will cut National Insurance to six per cent by April 2027 – meaning that we will have halved it from 12 per cent at the beginning of this year, a total tax cut of £1,350 for the average worker on £35,000.”
Key policies, as well as cutting another 2p from National Insurance, include pledging not to raise corporation tax and to keep the VAT threshold under review.
Sunak pledged to “scrap entirely the main rate of self employed national insurance” in the next parliament to encourage enterprise.
He also promised that if voters return him to No10, his Conservative government would “halve migration as we have halved inflation and then reduce it every single year”.
And on housing, he aimed to outdo Labour by promising to build 1.6m new homes, by speeding up planning on brownfield land in inner cities and “scrapping defective EU laws”.
The party has also pledged, if re-elected, not to raise the rate of income tax or VAT, to maintain the Living Wage, and claim they will raise “at least a further £6bn a year” by tackling tax avoidance by the end of the next Parliament.
Running to 76 pages, the A4 document includes chapters on business, supporting families, work and welfare, immigration, health, crime, net zero, housing and defence.
The Tories’ controversial offer of a “new model of National Service” appears in the manifesto, described as a “rite of passage” with 18-year-olds choosing between civic or military service.
On migration, the short two-page chapter commits to “introducing a binding legal cap on migration”, and raising the Skilled Worker threshold and family income requirement “with inflation automatically”.
The manifesto also promises “if forced to choose between our security and the jurisdiction of a foreign court, including the ECtHR, we will always choose our security” – but stopped short of committing to an exit.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer criticised the Conservatives’ plan, saying: “It’s a Jeremy Corbyn-style manifesto, which is load everything into the wheelbarrow, don’t provide the funding and hope that nobody notices.
“The money isn’t there, it is a recipe for five more years of chaos.”
More to follow