The next Labour government will reverse David Cameron and George Osborne’s tax cut for people earning over £150,000 for the next Parliament to help get the deficit down more fairly, Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls announced last Saturday.

In a speech to the Fabian Society Annual Conference, Ed Balls said that fairer deficit reduction meant that the top rate of tax would need to be raised from 45p back to 50p.

Ed Balls also announced a binding fiscal commitment that the next Labour government will balance the books, deliver a surplus on the current budget and get the national debt falling in the next Parliament

Latest figures from HMRC show that people earning over £150,000 paid almost £10 billion more in tax in the three years when the 50p top rate introduced by Labour was in place, then was estimated when the government conducted its assessment of the tax rate in 2012.

As part of plans for a fairer tax system that backs ordinary working people, Ed Balls said that Labour also wanted to introduce a lower 10p starting rate of tax to help make work pay and cut taxes for 24 million working people on middle and lower incomes.

Dr Matt Lamb, Labour’s Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Wyre Forest, said:

“I support Labour’s proposals to make the necessary changes to create a fairer tax system. Labour will crack down on tax avoidance, scrap the shares for rights scheme and reverse the tax cut for hedge funds.

In Wyre Forest the average gross income is just under £19,000. It is those hardworking families who need to be given a helping hand in these difficult times: not the millionaires that David Cameron has been helping. When the average family is more than £1,600 worse off than they were in 2010 I think that it is perverse that David Cameron has handed a tax cut to those earning over £150,000. That is why I want a lower 10p starting rate of tax, which would help make work pay and cut taxes for 24 million people on middle and lower incomes.

I believe that it is only fair that those who earn the most make their contribution. The latest figures show that those earning over £150,000 paid almost £10 billion more in tax in the three years when the 50p top rate of tax was in place than when the government conducted its assessment of the tax back in 2012.

That is why I fully support the pledge of the next Labour government to reverse this government’s top rate tax cut, so Labour can finish the job of getting the deficit down and do it fairly.

For the next Parliament, Labour will restore the 50p top rate of tax for those earning over £150,000. Reversing this unfair tax cut for the richest one per cent of people in the country. And cutting the deficit in a fairer way.”

Dr Matt Lamb Wyre Forest Labour Prospective Parliamentary Candidate