Sir Mel Stride has launched a scathing attack on Labour’s economic priorities, accusing them of “spending it all on benefits” instead of helping Britain’s businesses.
Speaking to GB News, the Shadow Chancellor hit out at the Government’s war on pubs and made clear Tory leader Kemi Badenoch’s pledge to “scrap business rates”.
Unveiling her blueprint to “save British pubs”, Mrs Badenoch took aim at Labour for treating pubs like “cash cows to milk instead of as places to protect”.
She wrote in The Telegraph: “The Conservatives have not given up on saving the Great British Pub. Since we have left office, things have got a whole lot harder for them. And so, under my leadership, we are going to be bolder and take radical action to save your local boozer.”
Detailing the Conservatives’ plan to save pubs, Sir Mel told GB News: “The most important thing that we can do now is to get business rates scrapped for most pubs. But the only way you can do that is to have a proper, economically coherent plan for doing so, which means squeezing spending in other areas, controlling spending, particularly welfare.
“And at our recent conference, we announced £23billion worth of savings in the welfare budget, so getting people off benefits and into work. And if you do those kind of things, you have the money to be able to take the tax burden and the costs of our vital businesses, including pubs.”
Defending the two-child benefit cap, the Shadow Chancellor added: “Let’s be clear for your viewers on this, the two-child benefit cap basically means that if you’re on benefits, Universal Credit, and you want to have more than two children in the family, in other words, have a large family, that you won’t get additional benefits for those additional family members.
“I think that’s right and I think that’s fair, because people that are out there working hard, paying their taxes, if they want to have large families, they have to take often tough financial decisions as to whether they can afford to do that. And I don’t think it’s right that the state should simply step in and start paying benefits to people, irrespective of the size of the family that they choose to have.”
Sir Mel Stride has hit out at Labour for ‘spending it all on benefits’ amid the Government’s war on pubs
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GB NEWS
Stressing the huge cost on Britons of scrapping the cap, Sir Mel told the People’s Channel: “Of course, it comes with huge cost. This policy that Labour are about to abolish will cost taxpayers getting on to £4billion. Now, if you want to take the pressure off pubs, you want to take business rates down or as we would be doing, abolish them, that costs money.
“Well, you can’t have that money to do that if you’re spending it all on the benefits bill. They’re the wrong priorities for this Government to have.”
Questioned on the recently announced plans by Labour to reduce the drink-drive limit, Sir Mel assured that the Tories will be looking at the legislation “very closely” before determining their stance on it.
He explained: “So really this is a consultation we’ll want as a party to look very closely at this, because it’s not just about the drink-drive limit, it’s also about other elements that impinge on road safety – licensing, how quickly you can get behind the wheel of a car and so on and so forth. We want to look closely at that.
Pub landlords across Britain are preparing to strike in protest at Rachel Reeves’ tax hikes (file photo) | GETTY
“But the reason why we’re even having this debate is because of the real stress that there is on our pubs. And the reason why there’s that huge financial stress is because of the decisions that the Government has taken.”
Sir Mel continued: “So it’s not just about business rates going up astronomically, it’s about national insurance having gone up on the people that are employed within pubs as well. All of these things are squeezing pubs and their margins to the point where many of them are ceasing to be viable.
“So what we really need to address is that fundamental issue of how do we create an economy in which we don’t weigh down businesses with all these costs and all this extra taxation, and allow them to go out there and grow and expand and employ people and grow our economy. And I’m afraid going out there and spending money on benefits, as Labour wants to do, is not the way to go about that.”
Grilled further on which cuts the Tories would make to help businesses if they were the next elected Government, the Shadow Chancellor said: “Well, the fundamental to all of this is going to be a radical rewiring of our economy, and that means many different things. And we’re doing a lot of work in working out exactly what that looks like.
Sir Mel told GB News that the ‘huge financial stress’ on pubs is because of the ‘decisions that the Government has taken’
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GB NEWS
“But it certainly involves tax getting taxed down and simplified. It means getting the size of Government down so that we’ve got more money to drive lower taxes, getting regulation out of the way of the of businesses, looking at the way skills works in this country.”
He concluded: “Too many people going to universities doing degrees that aren’t actually economically that valuable, but putting more of that money into apprenticeships, which is really important. Getting the welfare bill down, getting planning sorted so that we can actually build roads and rail and reservoirs and houses and things like that on time, on budget, without all these ridiculous delays that we have on all these projects.
“Getting energy costs down as well and creating a popular capitalism in which entrepreneurship and going out and taking a risk and growing businesses and doing those kind of things is championed and celebrated and encouraged by Government, policy and Government at the centre.
“Now that’s a whole different approach to the economy, but in the realm, that is how you have to do it. And if you can then grow the economy far more quickly, you can afford to do all these things that we want to do.”