‘Embarrassing’ details of Tories’ record show up in own economic attack dossier
A private Treasury attack dossier circulated to critique Labour’s economic policy includes detailed figures in the small print that highlight difficult statistics on the public finances under Conservative governments.
Labour said the figures in the dossier, seen by the Guardian, were “embarrassing” because the tables attached to the figures in documents showed Labour’s record on budget surplus was higher than the Conservatives’.
The detailed rejection of Labour’s spending plans has been sent to Tory MPs, as well as to broadcast journalists. Labour has circulated its own document to counter the claims.
In the appendix of the document, the figures reveal several difficult statistics for the Tories, including that a Labour government presided over the last budget surplus, that Labour governments presided over nine budget surpluses compared with five under Conservatives, and that the highest peacetime deficit came under the Tories – though that was during the Covid pandemic.
The document says Labour has “failed to set out how they would pay for a number of new spending measures” – including cancelling the rise in national insurance, not reducing international aid and supporting the full schools catch-up package proposed by the government’s education tsar Kevan Collins, who quit when it was not accepted.
Some of the measures listed by the Conservative document are not accurate descriptions of Labour policy, such as “scrap business rates” costing £25bn, when the opposition party has said it would replace the rates with a different taxation system.
The shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Pat McFadden, said the Conservatives could not highlight Labour’s record without showing other difficult statistics about their time in
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