Keir Starmer refuses to rule out council tax increases in grilling on Labour's economic plan

Sir Keir Starmer on Tuesday refused to directly rule out council tax increases under a Labour government as he faced a grilling from voters on his economic plans.

The Labour leader said he has no plans to put more financial pressure on working people and vowed that income tax, national insurance and VAT would not rise if he becomes Prime Minister next month.

But pressed about a raid on council taxes, he declined to promise the same.

During an LBC phone-in he said: “We’ve been really clear we’re not going to be raising tax on working people...What I’m not going to do is sit here two weeks before the election and write the budgets for the next five years.

“What I can say is that none of our plans require a tax rise. And that is for a reason and the reason is our focus is on getting our economy going, on building, on growing, on raising living standards and creating wealth.”

Sir Keir did also not directly rule out changing council tax bands, which bases payments on what a house was worth more than 30 years ago.

Band A is for houses valued at less than £40,000 in April 1991, while the highest Band H applies to those worth over £320,000 at that time.

But huge increases in property prices mean almost all homes are now worth far more.

Several Labour frontbenchers, including shadow Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds this morning, have ruled out changing the system.

Labour sits an average of 20 points ahead in opinion polls, while the Tories trail a distant second.

In the first MRP analysis since Nigel Farage announced he was standing for Reform UK in Clacton, Sir Keir’s party is projected to win a 262-seat majority.

The Tories slumped to just 72 seats. Labour would win 456 seats, the Liberal Democrats 56 and Reform UK seven, according to analysis from Survation.

A Tory minister on Tuesday admitted Labour could be in power “for 20 years” if the Conservatives “get this wrong at this general election”.

Mark Spencer insisted the Tories were not actively pursuing a strategy of damage limitation despite the dire polls.

The farming minister told Times Radio: “ I want to fight for every single vote. I want to try and talk to as many people as possible and get our positive message across.

“But of course, there are people out there that have serious concerns about what a Labour government will do, about how they’ll tax working people up and down the country.

“If we get a Labour government, and they could be there for a very long time, because of course, they’ll change the voting system. They’ll make sure that they give votes to 16 year olds. They’ve talked about giving votes to foreign nationals, to EU nationals.

“But also in the past, they’ve also talked about giving votes to prisoners, of course, we could end up with a Labour government for 20 years if we get this wrong at this general election.”

The three main parties all published their manifestos last week, claiming to have fully costed their policies to ensure they were affordable. But a survey published on Tuesday suggested most of the public do not share that view.

Half of those surveyed by Ipsos said they were not confident that Labour could afford the policies in its manifesto, with just 37 per cent saying they were confident.

But the figures for the other main parties were worse. Just a quarter of voters were confident the Conservatives could afford their policies while 62 per cent said they were not.

For the Lib Dems, 57 per cent said they were not confident their policies were affordable.

Keiran Pedley, UK director of politics at Ipsos, said proposals to improve public services tended to poll best, even if the public were “sceptical that any party can deliver all they have promised within existing spending plans”.