Scrapping 50p tax rate 'not a priority' for Labour
Party leader Ed Miliband has said it "will not prioritise" scrapping the 50p tax rate
LABOUR LEADER Ed Miliband has said that reversing the 50p tax rate “was not a priority” for his party.
Miliband was speaking at the Times CEO Summit in London yesterday. The opposition leader backed shadow chancellor Ed Balls’s call for a temporary VAT cut but he said scrapping the 50p top rate of income tax was “not a priority for us”. Although he wanted to “celebrate wealth creation in this country”, he said there were “issue about rewards at the top” while lower incomes were stagnating.
Chancellor George Osborne has indicated that the government will scrap the top rate of tax.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times has claimed that the shadow cabinet was not informed about Balls’s VAT pledge.
According to the paper, party sources said Balls and Miliband were united on the need to reverse the VAT rise, which will raise £13bn a year , “as soon as possible”. A party insider said: “There’s not a wafer of difference between them on this.”