Keir Starmer tells Lancashire businesses how he would tackle the cost of living crisis

The leader of the Labour Party Sir Keir Starmer has visited Bacup to talk to local businesses amid the National Insurance rise.

The hotly-debated subject of the rise in National Insurance payments comes into effect today (April 6), with most of the burden falling on individuals and businesses. It will see employees, businesses and the self-employed pay an extra 1.25p in the pound.

The Government have said this will be spent on health and social care – but the Opposition are concerned about how this will affect smaller businesses and families that are already feeling the pinch. Mr Starmer today visited small businesses in the town of Bacup to see how they feel towards the payment hike.

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“In Bacup we’ve been talking to local businesses – and they’re fantastic by the way, they’ve just been through Covid, they’re pulling together and what they want to do is to get back on their feet, get people back into the town,” Sir Keir told LancsLive.

“They’ve got ideas, they’ve got ambition and they want a government that matches those ideas and that ambition.

“Sadly, because of their energy prices going up and the taxes they’ll have to pay and the additional tax today, they’re going to struggle even more and I was really struck by one of the businesses we spoke to today saying that as a result of the higher energy costs and higher tax, they now will not be taking on a new person, they will not be employing. So that’s a job in Bacup that could have gone to a local business which would have been fantastic but it won’t happen now because the government’s got it so wrong in terms of the cost of living.”

Mr Starmer visited several businesses in Bacup, including card shop Wishes Galore, coffee shop 1832 Barista, Forget Me Nots Florist and air filtration manufacturer, Beta Group.

From today, those earning above £9,880 a year will pay contributions and from July, this will rise to those earning over £12,570 a year. When asked about how the Labour Party would help to keep rising bills down for Lancashire residents, the Leader of the Opposition told LancsLive: “The only topic people want to talk about is the cost of living crisis because everybody knows and is worried about the fact that their energy bills went up as of last Friday and often by hundreds of pounds.

“Today, the government has chosen to increase tax on individuals who are working and on businesses. Here in Bacup and across Lancashire, that is a real real cause for concern. What we would do about that is have a windfall tax on oil and gas companies in the North Sea – they make more money than they were expecting to make because global prices are so high.

“We say have a windfall tax on that and use that to reduce energy bills by up to £600 for people that need it most, but also don’t go ahead with this new tax today, this National Insurance tax – it’s the wrong tax at the wrong time, coming from a government that if you can believe it, has put tax up 15 times and so we’ve got the highest tax now for 70 years, so there are the very different approaches we would take.

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“It comes down to this central question of whose side are you on and I’m afraid this government just doesn’t get how people across Lancashire are struggling with the cost of living crisis.”

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, increase in taxation for employers and higher-income workers will raise an extra £10.9bn for the government per year. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has defended the rise by describing it as “necessary, fair and responsible.”

Health Secretary Sajid Javid also defended the increase, telling Sky News: “I think it is right that we pay for what we are going to use as a country but we do it in a fair way. This levy, the way it is being raised is the top 15% of earners will pay almost 50%. I think that is the right way to do this.”

However, Mr Starmer claimed the changes will “affect every family, but as ever, it will hit the ones that are struggling the most and they’re going to be really really hard hit”.

“We can talk about the big numbers but its the pensioners that I’ve spoken to who said to me that they haven’t been putting the central heating on even though it’s really cold. One pensioner said to me last week that she’s got a thermal over-jacket that she wears the whole time. Somebody else last week said they had to stay in bed for as long as possible because they don’t want to get out and put the heating on. This is the human cost of the failure of the government to get to grips with the failure of the cost of living crisis.”