General Election 2015: £7.5bn game changer as Labour pledges to crack down on tax avoidance
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Version 0 of 1. A Labour government will raise £7.5bn a year by introducing a crackdown on tax avoidance, Ed Miliband says, as he pledges his premiership will herald an era-defining end to the “old assumptions” of allowing the rich to escape paying taxes. In an exclusive interview with The Independent on Sunday, the Labour leader invokes Labour’s most successful prime ministers, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair, whom he said had each “called time on an old way of running the country”, as he sets out the key part of his party’s manifesto that will end the entrenched British assumption that there is “one rule for the rich and another for the poor”. Mr Miliband’s interview was at the end of an extraordinary week for the Labour leader in which he came under personal attack by the Conservatives and poll ratings in which him overtook David Cameron for the first time. Fired up by the “back-stabber” accusation by Defence Secretary Michael Fallon and a portrayal by the Daily Mail of him as a “cad” with a “tangled love life”, Mr Miliband says the next 25 days will be about the character of him and the Prime Minister and that the television debates have allowed voters to see the “real me, not the caricature”. He also reveals that Labour candidates and activists have now held 2.5 million of the 4 million conversations with voters the party plans by 7 May. Ed Miliband visits Airedale Hospital in Keighley, Yorkshire, on Saturday (PA) He says: “If you think about successful Labour prime ministers, you think about Attlee, you think about Wilson, you think about Blair in terms of what they did when they came to power. Each of them was calling time on an old way of running the country.” Attlee had built the NHS; Wilson had put his government behind the “white heat of technology”, while Mr Blair had invested in a “public realm that was crumbling”. Mr Miliband adds: “If you think about the pattern of my leadership, whether it’s Murdoch, the banks, the energy companies or non-doms, it is about saying… we’re going to tear up the old assumptions.” The anti-tax avoidance measures will raise £7.5bn by the middle of the next parliament, and a Labour chancellor and HMRC chief executive will both have to present an annual report to Parliament on whether the ambitious target is being met. On his first day as chancellor, Ed Balls will publish a draft anti-tax avoidance bill setting out a 10-point plan to tackle tax avoidance and evasion, which includes last week’s policy of abolishing non-dom rules. The party will use the money to fund its NHS Time to Care Fund, abolishing the bedroom tax and cutting tuition fees to £6,000, with any additional revenues raised used to reduce the deficit. The 10 anti-tax avoidance measures include changing “carried interest” rules which allow private equity managers to get away with paying less tax; closing loopholes used by hedge funds to avoid stamp duty and scrapping the “shares for rights” scheme. Labour says under the last Labour government the tax gap was falling by £1.5bn a year on average between 2005-06 and 2009-10, while under the Tories it has been increasing by an average of £1bn a year. Mr Miliband adds: “The Tories have spent the last week siding with the tax avoiders, spreading falsehoods about the Labour Party and desperately spraying around spending pledges without saying where a penny of the money needed will come from. But the amount of uncollected tax has risen by billions of pounds under this government because the Tories refuse to close the loopholes or take the tough action against avoidance that will make a difference.” Labour is launching its manifesto on Monday, while the Conservatives will publish theirs on Tuesday. Nick Clegg will set out more economic measures, including removing winter fuel payment and free TV licences from higher rate taxpayers. The Independent has got together with May2015.com to produce a poll of polls that produces the most up-to-date data in as close to real time as is possible. Click the buttons below to explore how the main parties' fortunes have changed: All data, polls and graphics are courtesy of May2015.com. Click through for daily analysis, in-depth features and all the data you need. (All historical data used is provided by UK Polling Report) |