Full transcript of “Brits face 'FORCED SALE of their homes' as Labour push Starmer for 'wealth tax' as debt 'EXPLODES'”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 A weakened K star is looking at imposing a wealth tax which could decimate Brit savings. Mr. Speaker, investors are fleeing the country the country. He says he has to stick to his manifesto promises. They promised not to put a tax on working people and then we got the jobs tax and all we have seen is jobs disappearing. Before the election, the prime minister promised and I quote, "Not a penny more on your council tax." Ah, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that now council tax bills will rise at their fastest rate in 20 years. Will the prime minister admit that under him council tax is set to sore? Minister, no, of course it's not. It soared under the last government. But Mr. Speaker, here here she goes again back on
0:47 familiar territory. She comes here complaining about the national insurance rise every year. Every week. Every week she comes here complaining about. And then when she's asked the question, well, would you have the courage then to re reverse it? What's the answer? What's the answer? No. And I'll tell you the lie. Cuz she's too embarrassed to say she doesn't want the investment we put in. That investment went to the NHS. They want the investment. They can't say how they're going to pay for it. That is what got us into the problem in the first place. Mr. Speaker, he still doesn't understand. So, I'm going to make it very simple for him. This is a mess of his own making. He shouldn't be asking how we would clean it up. The fact is they raise national insurance through the jobs tax and that's why they have to
1:34 put up council tax. The truth is his catastrophic budget has created a domino effect which he cannot now control. We on this side of the house know that you cannot tax your way to growth. But now he's flirting. But now he's flirting. They're all muttering. I remember that budget. They were laughing and cheering. They had no idea the mess that they were creating. They should go and explain to their constituents about why unemployment is going up. But, Mr. Speaker, what is more worrying is that now he's flirting with Neil Kinnick's demand for a wealth tax. Let's be honest about what that means. This is a tax on all of our constituent
2:20 savings, on their houses, on their pensions. It would be a tax on aspiration. Will the prime minister rule this out? Mr. Mr. Speaker says we shouldn't be asking them for advice on the economy. She's absolutely right about that. We will not be asking for their advice. What we did in the budget was stabilize the economy through the measures taken by the chancellor. And what has that led to four interest rate cuts for mortgage holders? That's hugely important. Compare and contrast what happened to the list trust uh mini budget. The fastest growth in the G7 in the first quarter of this year. Wages up more in the first 10 months of a Labor government than the 10 years under the tourist. So no, we don't need lessons
3:06 from them. Though there is huge pressure on the public finances. Just yesterday, the OBR warned Britain's public debt could soar past 600% of GDP, an unprecedented level, if we didn't change TAC. This should be the main story on the news every single day that unless something is done, unless we change path, the country is in an unsustainable position. Um, essentially, we're going to need either very big tax rises or very big spending cuts. I mean, this is the most extraordinary thing about it all. I mean the the central prediction is that debt is going to go from well it's near 100% of GDP now that's bad enough to 270% of GDP but the report says that if productivity continues to grow at the sluggish pl
3:52 pace that it's been growing at for the last couple of years 270 actually would be a massive underestimate it could rise to 647% of GDP I mean is there a single country in the world that has debt at that level I mean that that is that is affect effective bankruptcy. Yeah, we've been running the public finances essentially since the financial crisis on the basis that something will turn up, that somehow productivity growth will snap back into place, that living standards will rise again, that we'll go back to the world in the in the '9s uh and the 2000s and the 80s and the youth that um that you that that everything will will turn out okay. And we're slowly accepting that it's it's not going to do that. I mean the NHS alone over the next 50 years as the population ages is set to double as a percent the percentage of the national
4:38 wealth it takes u the um as the report today says the state pension with the triple lock is marching ever upwards. We saw just the other week welfare and incapacity spending meant to go up by 30 billion this parliament MPs Labor MPs couldn't even bring themselves to back something which would have taken 5 billion off that 30 billion. And Robert, how much of this is about the the pandemic? Because the report also says that we're in a particularly vulnerable position for any shocks. So if there were, god forbid, something like that to happen again to the global economy, we'd be stuffed. Yeah. So the pandemic is a huge part of this, but it's it's accelerated a longerterm story, which is that we haven't been, you know, the way you're meant to do this is you're meant to save during the good years to afford to be able to cope with things like the pandemic or or the financial crisis. And what we've been doing is we've been
5:24 splashing the cash when crisis come along, but we haven't then been saving. We haven't then been going back getting our budget back into surplus. I mean, from memory, I think the budget, the national budget has been in surplus four or five times in the last 50 years. So, and since the pandemic, because of the huge amounts of money we spent and and the economic impacts of that, essentially, we've been running the public finances on a on a on a sort of razor edge. The reason everyone cares about the OBR now and cares about fiscal headroom is that the chancellor both Jeremy Hunt and Rachel Reeves and any other chancellor has been running the has been running the public finances really really close to the edge. They because they cannot bring a good point. I mean if there if there was less of a large deficit, we wouldn't care what the hip said. It wouldn't matter so much. Robert, just really quickly in the mid 1970s we had to go crawling to the IMF
6:12 for a bailout. It was a humiliation for this country and with it came conditions. I mean, is there any way out of this that doesn't mean that we could uh head towards the International Monetary Fund for some sort of third world bailout? I I think that the real danger is is of a bond strike. It's of the guilt mark. You we are relying on the guilt markets to to buy huge amounts of debt from our country uh every year and the interest on that debt alone is going to cost us a hundred billion pounds every year for the rest of the parliament. we are already in the top range of of the amount we have to pay because because the people selling that buying that debt are a bit worried that about our trajectory if if they go on strike if they decide you know what we're not going to fund this anymore we're going to jack up the price this country has to pay the former political secretary to Tony
6:58 Blair said a wealth tax could help raise revenue despite concerns it would force people to sell assets including their homes to pay the yearly levy over the weekend it was this doom ridden graph that revealed the extent to which the government has decimated our economy. While countries like the United Arab Emirates in the US are attracting thousands of millionaires, the United Kingdom is scaring them off. Protect a projected 16,000 are set to leave. And you may think the government would attempt to turn this round by making the UK a more attractive place to live. But it was the former Labour leader Lord Kinuk who said yesterday that the party was considering implementing wealth taxes. Well, I'm joined now by former political secretary to Satani Blair, John McTurnon. John, it's pleasure to have you on the program again. Wealth
7:44 taxes have been tried in other countries. They just get wealthy people to leave, don't they? Um, it depends what tax uh you're using and it depends what wealth you're taxing. A lot of the wealth in the UK is in domestic property. I think that property is under taxed at the moment and I could imagine a wealth tax that did actually uh generate some revenue for local government for social care stabilize uh those services and could also stabilize the health service. So there's more than one way to approach the issue of where's the wealth and how can we tax it? Well, you say that our property is under tax, but haven't we got the highest um property taxes in the G7? Uh we we're under taxed and they were under tax but we're still the highest in the G7. So everyone else is
8:30 massively under taxed. The Buckingham Palace pays less council tax um than a semi in Blackpool and that's completely relevant because anybody who buys a property in London costing a couple million pounds will pay 15% stamp duty. Well, I think there's loads of uh rigidities uh in the tax system that we should reform and wealth tax will be one part of a whole package. I don't think we actually are in a situation where we should be picking one tax here and one tax there anymore. The thing is quite a um extensive tax code that could do with some simplification that would be fair could be fair and could generate more revenue. Let's focus on capital taxes because there seems to me there is a
9:17 difficulty with capital taxes in that they don't have a cash flow associated with them. So when you um pay stamp duty there is a transaction there is cash available. When you have a charge on people's assets they don't actually have the cash to get it and they've got to get the cash from taxed income. That's extremely difficult for most people unless they're not not not just millionaires but billionaires. Yeah. But we're we're looking at a situation where we're trying to find a fair way uh to raise the revenue required for public services and taxing capital and balancing the tax on capital compared to the tax on on on labor is a
10:03 fair way to move forward. But is it because capital gains tax and death duties both try to raise cash when there is some element of transaction. They have their difficulties because capital gains tax is essentially voluntary and death duties can be planned around but at least there is something happening which makes cash available. With a wealth tax, where is the money coming from? Because you can't sell 2% of your house. No, you but you can rent 2% of your house, can't you? uh if your if your house is under occupied, if you're a council tenant, you've got a bedroom tax which is a pressure downwards on you to try to move you out of your property to a different smaller property. If you're occupying, which a lot of people are in the private sector who are homeowners, then what a little incentive to stay
10:50 working a bit longer or a little So, are you basically I'm delighted to hear this because you're basically saying I'm exempt because I've got six children and therefore my house is fully occupied. uh indeed probably be overoccupied on the council's judgment on the on the on yeah on on the on the days and nights that they're always around with you but you know thing about kids as you must know is that they're um constantly growing older and eventually they leave you and then you'll have a choice about the size of house you have and well are you is um Neil Kinnock proposing a wealth tax of this kind that you'll pay only if you're not using your bedrooms and if you take in a lodger you'll get discount no I Neil Neil is proposing uh I think a different tax from me. I'm just pointing out that wealth wealth is around us in
11:37 many many ways in the during the pandemic uh when the economy was quite quiet. Uh two trillion pounds increased in domestic property value. That is a form of windfall because people weren't actually improving the economy but their houses got much much uh more valuable. We just need to look at a wide range of ways of raising revenue but it's not a windfall cuz they can't do anything with it. They've got to live in their house. The shadow business and trade secretary said the UK tax base is on a knife edge as highworth individuals flee high tax and regulations. It's just depressing. Um the lack of understanding from this government. I mean they genuinely believe there's a magic money tree. It is insane when people are voting with their feet. Some of the the people that pay we have a hugely progressive tax system in this
12:23 country. The top 1% pay fully 30% of all income tax. Imagine a system that's so precarious as that that if that top 1% leave as we're seeing day by day more evidence mounting that they are that everybody else is going to have to pay more to make good that 30% hole in income tax. Um you're right on capital taxes um and and the great learning over time is that there's a sweet spot um in tax. is why Ireland has one of the highest levels of individual prosperity, GDP per capita, the amount uh of their economy, their living standards, because they they discovered uh what many people already knew, particularly uh Art Lafer, the uh the great economist, that if you
13:10 at some points reduce tax, you actually raise more money. Then you can go and do things that socialists love doing, spending money on our unreformed public services, redistributing wealth within society. But you do that off the back of a bigger cake to start off with. Okay. But we both supported Liz Truss and she tried this and she was out within 7 weeks. Um and and as you know, uh subsequent investigations into things like the Bank of England and the degree of concentration of our pension funds in guilts undoubtedly played a a role around that. I'm not going into the individual execution of of things. Um, but that has to be where the Conservative Party, the consistent party of economic competence that believes in people keeping more of what they earn
13:57 and government spending the minimum consistent with providing a basic safety net in society. That to me is where the Conservative Party is right to pitch its tents. And it's probably no coincidence that we've had a few good weeks actually and Kemy's done a lot of talking about the economy, about some honest truths about the state we're in. uh but also talking about those first principle conservative values as it comes to the economy.
