Sunak refuses to say how government might fund long-term proposal to abolish national insurance
Rishi Sunak has declined to say how his long-term plan to abolish employees’ national insurance might be funded. In an interview for broadcasters, asked about this, he said:
I think what people can see from me, I think they trust me on these things, is that I will always do this responsibly.
We funded our current tax cuts responsibly, borrowing hasn’t increased, we are still on track to meet our fiscal rules that have our debt falling.
At the No 10 lobby briefing the PM’s spokesperson also declined to say how the government might fund this proposal. And he refused to say whether the government was considering forgoing the entire £46bn it gets from national insurance, or whether it was considering getting rid of national insurance by merging it with income tax, which might result in income tax having to rise.
In an interview this morning Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, said one option would be to merge income tax and national insurance.