PMQs: Keir Starmer attacks 'out of touch' Rishi Sunak over tax rises
- Published
Sir Keir Starmer has accused Rishi Sunak of being "out of touch" and raising taxes for working people.
During Prime Minister's Questions, the pair traded personal attacks, with Sir Keir using Mr Sunak's own wealth against him.
The Labour leader claimed the prime minister was "clueless about life outside his bubble".
But Mr Sunak insisted the government was helping households through cost-of-living payments.
Sir Keir accused the prime minister of presiding over a "low-growth, high-tax economy", after "13 years of failure" by the Conservatives.
He claimed wages, when price rises were taken into account, had fallen by 拢1,600 per household under the Tories.
Branding the prime minister "Mr 24 tax rises", the Labour leader criticised Mr Sunak for refusing to scrap non-dom status, which he said the PM and his family had personally benefitted from.
Last year, it emerged that Mr Sunak's wife had non-dom status, which allows people living in the UK to avoid paying UK tax on money made outside the UK.
She later said she would start paying UK tax on her overseas earnings.
However, Mr Sunak hit back saying: "The fact is the wealthiest pay more tax and the poorest pay less tax today than under... the last Labour government."
He accused Labour of wanting more spending and more borrowing, which he said would lead to higher inflation and interest rates.
The prime minister pointed to increases to the national living wage and cost-of-living payments as ways the government was helping working people.
Mr Sunak also criticised Sir Keir over a special pensions tax arrangement he had from his time as director of public prosecutions, claiming it was "literally one law for him and a tax rise for everybody else".
But the Labour leader rejected his accusations of "hypocrisy", saying: "Here's the difference, I would scrap his pensions giveaway whether it affected me or not.
"He refuses to scrap the non-dom status that benefits him and his family."
Branding the prime minister "out of touch", Sir Keir referenced an occasion last year when Mr Sunak, believed to be one of the richest MPs, was mocked for appearing to struggle to use his card to pay for petrol during a photo opportunity.
"Is it any wonder that he smiles his way through the cost-of-living crisis while putting other people's taxes up?" he added.
Liberal Democrat Treasury spokeswoman Sarah Olney said: "Years of devastatingly unfair tax hikes has proven this Conservative government is completely out of touch with reality."
Labour's strategy has increasingly focused on attacking the prime minister personally, ahead of local elections in England in May.
The party has put out a number of adverts on Twitter in recent weeks targeting Mr Sunak, including over his record on crime and his wife's non-dom status.
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