Richard asks Chancellor if she will rule out further tax rises for British businesses

During Treasury Questions in the House of Commons last week, Richard Fuller MP, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, asked Rachel Reeves if she would avoid creating the same damaging uncertainty she did last summer by ruling out any further tax increases on British businesses given that they have already been "clobbered" by the rise in Employer National Insurance Contributions this year. The exchange can be watched at https://youtu.be/BAQHnSkKLb0

Richard said:

I took away three things from my interaction with the Chancellor last week:

1. She desperately needs a better line than constantly repeating that she'll "take no lessons from the party opposite". At some stage she's going to have to front up and take ownership of her decisions that have so damaged the economy rather than harking back to the previous Conservative government. It's also noteworthy that given the economic outlook and growth projections that she inherited just 1 year ago, perhaps she should be more open to taking some lessons!
2. Her deflection only serves to highlight that the Chancellor has no answers whatsoever when challenged on the dire consequences of her Job's Tax. Time and again she refuses to address the questions asked and most noticeably, flatly refused to rule out further tax rises on businesses in her next budget.
3. Astonishingly, she still pretends that her Jobs Tax wasn't an assault on 'working people' despite impartial bodies describing it as exactly that. The ONS has proclaimed that the jobs market has collapsed which surely affects working people's ability to find work or change jobs. The Bank of England says that there has been significant declines in wage growth which clearly affects the real take home pay of workers. The Institute of Directors describes plummeting business confidence and the British Chamber of Commerce warns that businesses cannot be subjected to further tax rises. All of which points to less business investment, fewer jobs and lower wages. And yet in the Chancellor's economic nirvana, it seems that workers in the UK have never had it so good.