The shadow chancellor has portrayed himself as a “hard-nosed bureaucrat” with fully costed spending plans and criticised what he claimed were Conservative lies about Labour’s tax plans.
In an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, John McDonnell tried to convey an image of economic competence after a day dominated by Diane Abbott’s error-strewn interview on Tuesday over police spending.
He also criticised the BBC for repeating without question Tory claims of “Labour’s tax bombshell”. McDonnell confirmed Labour’s pledge to provide an extra 10,000 police officers would come from reversing cuts to capital gains tax, and suggested this would also help protect the £160m arts premium.
But he said extra school funding and welfare spending would come from a fairer taxation system to be revealed in the party’s manifesto.
McDonnell said: “I’ve got a reputation for being a hard-nosed bureaucrat, both in my professional life in the past and also political. Our policies will be fully costed and the funding source will be identified. We will ensure that those priorities are the priorities of the British people. That is about having a fair taxation system.
“What I will be doing when the manifesto is launched is that every item of expenditure will be fully costed and there will be a funding source identified.”
The Conservatives unveiled a poster to highlight what they claim is a £45bn gap between Labour’s spending plans and the revenue it would raise.
McDonnell criticised the advert and the way it had been reported. “In common parlance people would call what the Tories have published today lies,” he said. “I’m shocked that the BBC has just taken a Conservative press release and has repeated it all morning. You’re the BBC, you have to have some form of analysis before you put something on air.”
He said the supposed £45bn gap included £35bn of capital spending: “I’m amazed the chancellor of the exchequer can’t distinguish between capital and revenue spend. Capital spend does not come out in terms of individual revenue spend. It is just the cost of the borrowing that comes out.“
Pressed to explain what he meant by fairer taxation, McDonnell played down his previous suggestion that those earning over £70,000 a year would fall into a higher tax band.
“I’m not saying £70,000,” he said. “I’m saying on the higher percentage earners you will see that we will be asking people, particularly the corporations as well, to bear a bit more of the burden, because we cannot go on in terms of NHS in crisis, our education cuts happening on a scale we’ve not seen since the 1970s and the running down of our public services.”
He also pledged a crackdown on tax evasion and avoidance, a banker’s levy and and an end to tax giveaways for the rich.
David Davis, the Brexit secretary, rejected McDonnell’s claim that the Conservatives had lied about Labour’s financial plans.
“He’s just wrong,” Davis told Today. “Every single element in it has got the documentation of who said what behind it. What we haven’t put in are all the privatisations they’ve talked about – rail, energy, buses, you name it. We’ve taken just the ones that are very, very clear promises, and they’ve already backed off a couple of the things, and they’ve got a £45bn black hole.”
