Firms warn against tax hikes after Mandelson files expose Labour’s ‘economic illiteracy’
Bosses sounded the alarm over soaring taxes yesterday after it emerged Labour MPs want to squeeze more from firms and households to pay for welfare hikes.
The revelation was part of this week’s fresh tranche of the Mandelson Files, where Sir Keir Starmer’s former Cabinet enforcer Pat McFadden admitted every Labour meeting is about ‘who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others’.
He added the government was asking the ‘wrong questions’.
It added to the exasperation among business leaders at Labour’s ‘economic illiteracy’ and came as Marks and Spencer chairman Archie Norman lamented that ‘rarely in history’ has Britain been so anti-growth.
Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of marketing firm S4 Capital, said: ‘It’s one of the reasons we’re in such a mess.’
And Hugh Osmond, the former Pizza Express entrepreneur, said: ‘It is what a huge number of them think – without realising that fewer workers plus lower productivity equals less tax and less money for everyone.’
According to the Mandelson files Sir Keir Starmer’s former Cabinet enforcer Pat McFadden said every Labour meeting is about ‘who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others’
Tony Redondo, founder of Cosmos Currency Exchange, said: ‘This neatly encapsulates the economic illiteracy of this government. They are not in the least concerned with wealth creation.’
It came as Mr Norman warned in the M&S annual report that the business had rarely faced a regulatory environment ‘less friendly to growth and investment’.
Firms continue to be battered by Labour’s national insurance hikes, steep rises in the minimum wage, a raft of new workers’ rights and botched business rates reform.
The Confederation of British Industry also warned this week that many firms are ‘forced to focus on resilience rather than expansion’.
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