Press Release – Prime Minister’s Comments on the Labour Budget – 23 March 1992

Below is the text of the Conservative Party Press Release on Mr Major’s comments on Labour’s shadow budget. It was issued on Monday 23rd March 1992, reference 546/92.

TURNING THE SEARCHLIGHT ON LABOUR

“Two days ago, the Chancellor exposed the full, expensive horror of Labour’s manifesto. Thirty-eight billion pounds of extra spending”, the Rt Hon John Major, Prime Minister, and Leader of the Conservative Party, said at a press conference, at Conservative Central Office today.

We have costed every one of those pledges. And we have published every detail of our costing.

Yesterday, I asked Labour a very simple question.

Who would pay for this?

We’re still waiting for the answers.

Mr Smith’s ‘mock Budget’ produced less than £7 billion – even though it threatened the most vindictive tax increases in our history.

That leaves more than £31 billion to be found in still higher taxes. To meet this bill, Labour would have to raise taxes savagely in every Budget, year after year after year.

So who would pay these extra taxes?

Mr Smith has had to admit he couldn’t make the better-off pay for everything. That’s because his mock Budget would already have milked them dry.

The simple fact is that everybody would have to pay more. A lot more. £1,250 a year more per taxpayer. Mr Kinnock calls these figures fantasy. Then let him dismiss fantasy with fact.

These calculations can’t be swept under the carpet.

That is why we’re going to go on pressing for answers. For Labour’s costings. And how they’re going to meet the bill.

We’re going to talk about some other subjects Labour finds painful. The effect of these high tax policies on the economy. On people’s lives.

And today, in particular, Michael Heseltine’s going to talk about their effect on people’s homes.

In the last week we’ve had some good political skirmishes. We have now got seventeen days to safeguard Britain’s future. Out there, waiting for us with a new Conservative Government, is economic recovery, more jobs, lower taxes, new homes and better services. Or there’s Labour alternative: policies that would raise everybody’s taxes, force them out of their homes, damage recovery and destroy jobs. I can promise you we will keep the searchlight on that choice, day after day.”