Sir Keir Starmer has accused the government of “gambling the mortgages and finances” of the British people with its “casino economy”.
Speaking ahead of his party’s conference in Liverpool, the Labor leader tweeted: “The Tory casino economy is playing with the mortgages and finances of every family in the country. Labor will deliver growth for working people , which will benefit all communities. My government will deliver a fairer and greener future.”
Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced his tax aspirations in a £45bn tax cut package that will benefit the richest 1% at the expense of struggling households.
Kwarteng also cut stamp duty for home buyers and brought forward a cut in the basic rate of income tax to 19p in the pound, a year earlier, in April.
The announcement sent the pound to its lowest level against the dollar in 37 years.
Announcing his mini-budget on Friday, Kwarteng said economic policy should focus entirely on growth.
But Deputy Labor leader Angela Rayner said the next generation would be worse off after the government’s “trickle-down” approach to the economy.
“We’ve had 12 years of the Tories and growth hasn’t expanded, and people haven’t seen the economy grow in the way we need it to,” he told BBC Breakfast.
“We’ve seen economic trickle down before. It doesn’t work. We don’t think it’s going to stimulate the economy and I think it’s going to make the next generation worse.”
Labour’s deputy leader said her party’s growth plan would be different, adding: “We wouldn’t make a decision on tax cuts at the moment, we don’t think that’s the way to go.”
Chart showing the gains from the 2022-23 personal tax cut by income group
“We would be asking the oil and gas companies to pay a little more when they have made billions of pounds in profit, rather than putting it all on the national debt. We don’t think that is the right priority.”
Rayner hinted that Labor would reverse the government’s income tax cut in a bid to boost sustainable growth and ease the cost of living crisis for those on the lowest wages.
“We have said that cutting income tax is the wrong priority. We don’t think it is a priority,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
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“We will set out our tax proposals which will ensure that those on the lowest wages improve their cost of living. We will have sustainable growth in the future. We will invest in highly skilled jobs and renewable energy, so we will be dependent on our energy needs.”
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said the only people to benefit from tax cuts in the coming years would be those earning more than £150,000, while the rest would be left worse off.
“Well, if we look directly at people’s incomes with these tax changes, the more money you have, the more you earn,” the think tank’s director, Paul Johnson, told BBC Breakfast.
“In fact, because there was a big increase in taxes, the chancellor did not reverse, and it is the fall in time at the time when you start paying personal income tax, if you take that into account, from here in three or four years. , the only people who will gain from this will earn more than about £150,000 a year.
“If you’re on less than about £150,000 a year, if you’re part of the 99% with less than £150,000 coming in, you’re going to be even worse off as a result of the tax changes that are coming in the next two to three years.”
The government has defended criticism of the Chancellor’s mini-budget, insisting that “it was not a bet but a necessity”.
“We cannot continue with high taxes. We cannot accept lower growth than we would like because people in this country want higher wages,” Chief Secretary to the Treasury Chris Philp told Times Radio.
“They want better living standards, they want to see money invested in public services, they want to see investments, they want their children to have a better future than they did.”
The only way to achieve these aspirations was through a growth plan, he added.