Labour is addicted to taxing people, shadow justice minister claims

Shadow Justice Minister Dr Kieran Mullan has claimed that Labour politicians are “addicted” to imposing taxes on people.

On increasing taxes to fund improvements to social care, Mullan told GB News: “Let’s be clear: this is yet another iteration of a Labour government that is addicted to taxing people as a solution for everything. We had Pat McFadden admit that in private text messages that all he ever hears from Labour MPs is how they can tax people more.

“We’re very clear. Yes, there is the need to reform social care, and we’ve been participating in cross-party talks on that basis. But there shouldn’t be any new tax burden placed on the population to achieve that, and there shouldn’t be additional borrowing either.

“This government is taxing and borrowing its way out of every problem, and in the end, that just means future generations paying more. We need to learn to live within our means.”

He added: “We know, for example, that we’re spending £23 billion a year that we don’t need to on benefits for people who have what we would consider to be minor mental health conditions. We know that there is billions and billions planned to be spent on the Chagos deal, where we’re paying another country to take back sovereignty of our own territory.

“We know the civil service, if we were able to cut that back just to the levels that it was pre-Covid, that would save billions of pounds. We know when it comes to the restoration of the two-child benefit caps that there’s fairness in our benefit system for people who have to manage their budgets and think about the size of their family, that we could save money there.

“So there is money to be saved. As I said, this government has massively increased spending and borrowing. The answer is to not increase that further.”

Asked about the allegation that an Instagram post by Zack Polanski incites violence against Nigel Farage, he said: “It’s terrible that that image has been shared, and the leader of the Green Party, Zack Polanski, will have to account for why he did that. That’s not the sort of thing that we should be trivialising, even a suggestion of violence towards politicians.

“This comes on the back of the absolutely brutal, horrific murder of Ann Widdecombe that I think shocked the whole nation. The idea that you might even inadvertently, by not taking necessary care, share an image like that is appalling. But I’m afraid he has a track record for this, Zack Polanski.

“I spent some time volunteering as a police officer, and I was appalled to see when he shared criticisms of the two police officers, your viewers might remember, who tackled the knife man that was attacking the Jewish community in North London, and he shared a post that was criticising the fact that they’d used force.

“These two brave police officers tackling a knife man who literally just stabbed people, and he actually even after making the social media post didn’t back down, said that the perpetrator was handcuffed at the time, which wasn’t true.

“He has a track record, and not just him. We have all sorts of awful things that Green Party councils have shared across social media, offensive material in relation to, for example, black politicians in my party, in the Labour Party, referring to them as coconuts. There’s just this horrible mess of stuff that’s coming out of the Green Party, and Zack Polanski is just adding to that.”