Labour plot more tax raids and what is the outdoor smoking ban? | The Daily T Podcast

Intro taxes on fuel Camila y taxes on wealth more pain ahead says our new prime minister it is the headache for labor and for us during the election campaign didn't labor say they would not impose more taxes on working people whatever that means Cal but it has then begged the question well if they won't tax working people what will they tax and how will it affect those working people and as well as tax what might the new government ban leaked details on plans to stop people smoking outside pubs outside restaurants or even using Vapes is it the nanny State gone mad or a bloody good health initiative welcome to the daily tea with me camil tomany and me Kamal Ahmed in order to discuss Labor's plans for seemingly taxing us more in some way Cal let's just analyze what Rachel Rees said during the election campaign she was speaking to Sam coats of Sky News she was very clear can you rule out anything around vat are there other tax Rises that you think might have to run your plans might are no further increases in tax that we are planning or that we need to fill any black holes are you ruling that out for the whole Parliament well we've already ruled out increases in income tax National Insurance and corporation tax that's further but not the others that's the point you sound like you're not going to raise so you're not going so there could be raises other taxes other than those three going I'm not going to write a budget here but I've been very clear about the tax changes that are needed to fund the plans that we've put forward and voters can be uh certain unlike with the conservatives who are putting out 64 billion pound worth of unfunded tax cuts that there's nothing in my plans that's not fully costed and fully funded and that is the difference now between the labor party that will put stability first and a conservative party that is desperately uh throwing around huge checks without any idea how they're going to pay for them ah so no black holes Cal no plans to raise taxes further but this is what Rachel reev said this week so let me just ask you very directly can you rule out raising inheritance tax and raising capital gains in the budget can you rule that out Chancellor I'm not going to write a budget two months ahead of delivering we're going to have to make difficult decisions in a range of areas on spending on spending on welfare and tax we're going to have to make a series of difficult decisions but I'll set out that detail in the right and proper way on the 30th of October at that budget what's interesting about the budget What is Rachel Reeves planning? process is that actually Rachel Reed has probably written most of it already because she started writing the whole process is very involved the office for Budget responsibility have to mark the treasury's homework on the public finances so although she can say I don't want to write the budget now this process is already on the way the great difficulty politically for labor they are now trapped in being constantly asked are you going to raise this tax yes are you going to raise that tax they have locked themselves into position where the two big themes and I think they are the wrong ones which they cannot have wanted in the first two months of this new labor government are are you going to raise taxes because of the terrible state of the public finances and it's all the Tory's fault yes when they should have had a narrative which was all about ambitious change changing the country growth growth growth Rachel reev said the central mission of this government was growth we are talking about other things and we've got eight weeks of this there are eight weeks to go until the budget so we might be distracted a little bit by the Tory leadership race but that question is now going to be being asked day in Day Out by journalists not sure how that serves the chancellor or indeed the Prime Minister wellar let's step back I think the tax debate for this country is one of the most important what is the right level of tax take for individuals so the state can provide us all with the public services that we want little quiz question for you I love a quiz question we do love a quiz question if we go back to let's say the first year of second year of John Major's government 1993 to 1994 yeah I was in the the tax burden now is 36% Y what was it in 1993 well it has to be lower than well it has to be lower than now because we keep on banging on about the tax burden being the highest since the second world war but I would say what like 32 or 33% or something like that it is actually 28.4 what so we have been on a journey in this country during the Margaret Thatcher era the governments of the 1980s the Lawson Boom the Lawson tax cuts the actual level the tax burden dropped really significantly from 34% at the beginning of her government right down looking at the graph here right down to 1993 28.4 if you think of the con well happy happy days we have touched on this haven't we ca for some there is something has happened in the conservative um uh ecology that has lost the idea that we are a low tax government still providing good services but allowing people to keep more of their money if you look at the graph of that tax burden which I'm just doing now yeah it goes up and down after that John Major it starts rising and then even under the last Labor government 1997 to 2010 so that's Blair and then Gordon Brown it goes up and down but always below 34% do you know when the big rise is recent times because of covid there is that but even before that Boris Johnson ah the big spender it's really remarkable when you look at I can see exactly why the conservatives are putting themselves in a position where labor always be weak on tax yeah before 97 the overhang of the 1970s was still huge for labor the conservatives know that they can get a lot of mileage out of attacking labor on tax but the burden issue you're absolutely right has been rocket boosted by covid and the fact that so many people were paid to stay at home or be out of work some would argue for very good reasons but even before that the Boris Johnson era it sort of wrecked the conservatives um uh the conservative image of being hard on tax low State this is what the conservatives because he kept on kind of Honey monstering around going on about building bries and building infrastructure projects and being very much like he was in London he was having to be reigned in because he wanted Legacy projects to kind of Define his Premiership then covid happens then they fall into this I think there's also by the way a bit of a hangover of the post Corbin ERA with this idea that some people in number 10 seem to think that even righties quite liked corbon omics but they were asking righties in their endless focus groups the wrong sorts of questions they they were asking people things even on the right like would you be willing to pay an extra pence in the pound to make the NHS better it's really hard Cal to say no to that question a more honest question would be would you mind paying an extra pence in the pound towards the NHS but I'm really sorry we can't guarantee whether it'll be better or more productive or not because that's actually the reality of that kind of question so you've got a a two-pronged problem I would suggest a drift away over the course of time from Thatcher Lawson Redwood type economics low tax Pro capitalist agenda to this period where the conservatives quite became quite embarrassed about being capitalists that they felt that they along with the criticisms over austerity fell into a sort of Gordon gecko stretching out the red braces greed is good ERA you combine that with the conservatives being deeply illiberal over covid and being Draconian and telling people what to do and we're going to get into this a little bit when we talk about the smoking ban and they you then end up with quite a confused small seed conservative electorate who doesn't quite know anymore that they want the NHS to be better but deep down they want to keep more of their own money but they've almost become inured and it's demonstrated with your figures right from a tax burden of 28% now to almost 38% has the electorate become a climatized to the idea that with an aging population and a massive NHS that is the greedy monster that needs to be fed that the tax burden just must remain high or is there this deep-seated desire for people to keep more of their own money I genuinely would argue that it's the latter I think that you Empower people and you grow the economy by saying to them you work really hard we will try and take as little of your cash your hard earned cash as we can and we will plow it into public services that we hope will deliver what's happened is that the Public's been given not just a slap on the right side of their face but a slap on the left we're going to take more of your money and we're going to deliver worse Public Services which is the worst of Both Worlds and that is there's a backdrop of really poor economic growth and almost recession after recession after recession ever since the financial crisis so I would say the financial crisis of 20072 2008 which was the state had to lean in via the central banks to fund the financial system and covid have given people I think a more benign attitude than maybe people had in the 1980s about the role of the state to do everything I would imagine that the population or the polling evidence actually uh says that the population is probably a bit divided Labor uh voters 65% of them say that they they believe that the tax burden can increase if Public Services get better that's far far lower than uh conservatives I think labor have a problem I spoke to Rachel re very similar to the interview that Sam coats did at the manifesto launch I remember I do genuinely think and I know I'm going to be tested on this Rachel Reeves at heart is liberal on taxes she does believe just as you've said that people should be able to keep more of their hard earned cash but there is a tension in labor when lots of her colleagues are much more on what might be described as the Fabian wing of the labor party which is much more in that Gordon Brown we need to invest big to reform Public Services the big difference here and I think another strategic mistake that labor has made is that they have given the public sector pay increases without attaching them directly to productivity and reform and under Blair and brown despite the huge rounds between the two of them on this issue Blair always argued only with reform and we've lost we've lost the art of small l i don't mean liberal Democrat but liberalism in the UK that the smaller the state the more individuals can flourish Blair held that candle I suppose for labor 997 and onwards who is holding it for the labor party now they lack a modernizer of that type I think Rachel Reeves almost fits that I think wed streeting the health secretary um has some elements of that in his mind that he wants to see uh reform but I think K starma others around him are much more traditional Fabian labor which is we're just going to need more money but there's a problem for the conservatives as well here because where's their modernizer who is repackaging thatcherism for 2024 who is making the arguments for capitalism who is persuading people that wealth creation comes from people keeping more of what they earn from growing the pie rather than this Obsession this sort of socialist obsession with the pie remaining the there's only one pie and it's only this size and we've got to just slice it up the capitalist argument is no you make the pie bigger my God I'm channeling my inner Liz trust she kept on going on about growing the pie or you make two pies I tell you what capitalism delivers in as in opposition to socialism is you make two pies and then you've got more slices to give out who's making these arguments because we've had a lot from the leadership candidates on say for instance if I think about kemy bade knock sort of culture wars we've had a lot from Robert genrich on immigration we've had a lot from Tuan har and cleverly about you know getting the band back together and the future of conservatism why are they shying away from these really key conversations about capitalism and low taxes being a generally good thing you know we've asked them in this studio Which tax would you cut first then I I haven't really thought about it you know apparently we we caught Robert genrich unawares with that question come on man because I tell you what you can go down to the local pub and you can have people who are running small and mediumsized businesses telling you really bloody quickly that you can cut corporation tax thank you very much and make us more competitive Post brexit in line with Ireland oh and by the way you can ask anybody of a certain age what they think of inheritance tax and get a pretty clear answer and you can also by the way ask anyone who might have a few assets who might be a b toet landlord who by the way whisper it these are the wealth creators but the left don't seem to understand that and you can have a good conversation with them about what they think of cgt capital gains tax Rises so it's not difficult this stuff but it's the nettle that the Tories refuse to grasp it's it's amazing looking at it you know from from a position where you know I'm much more in the center maybe than on the conservative right but I consider myself to be a liberal how quickly that has happened even under PE even under the people that are often most criticized by the conservative right David Cameron and George Osborne the whole point of raising tax thre raising tax thresholds so that more and more people were taken out of paying any tax if they had lower incomes was a huge part of the policy proposal from from George Osborne every budget I remember him getting up and saying and this year we can raise the tax threshold to £12,000 a year for you know income tax that disappeared uh so rapidly Boris Johnson put in place building on what Theresa may actually did record budget amounts for things like uh the NHS yeah the question now I suppose for Rachel Reeves because politics is a choice does she actually need to raise taxes in this next budget or could she decide that she's going to borrow a little more to cover those in-year spending overspends that have been revealed I think it is a reasonable argument that they came into government and there were some things maybe not 22 billion pounds worth of things but there were definitely some things that were uh more out of kilter than she could have imagined before she went into the treasury growth is stronger there is one small thing in the back of my mind all this talk about pain now oh it's going to be terrible oh it's going to be terrible could you imagine could you imagine a scenario Camila where she stands up on budget day and we have seen this so many times with other chancellors and she says many people said to me you're going to have to raise taxes on fuel many people said to me you're going to have to raise inheritance tax thresholds many people said to me capital gains tax is going to come up I have listened to those arguments but but let me tell you today there will be no tax rises in this budget waving of order papers everyone cheering there's part I don't believe this is true but there is part of me wondering this whole softening up process is for when the budget comes expectation man yeah there there are maybe some tiny tax changes and actually what she does is she changes the way we analyze our debts which might give us some more ceiling space to be able to spend more on public services without breaking our fiscal rules I think you're being optimistic I I think that is perfectly reason you're being optimistic it would be a strange outcome if a labor Chancellor didn't stand up and raise taxes in some way even by stealth I think yeah as I say when I chatted to her at the manifesto launch she had a glint in her eye when I kept saying but you would love to be a labor Chancellor that cuts taxes let's see what she does on um uh fuel uh let's see what she does on thresholds the one area and this is where labor always have a problem what who they call the wealthy the top 10% of income tax payers yes What proportion of the overall income tax take comes from that top 10% I feel like saying 53% that's not a bad go it actually Camila 60% wow labor need to be careful there are atmosphere Erics here do they sound like a party that is promoting wealth creation growth uh backing entrepreneurs looking like a country that's open for business for International Investment or are they going to sound we need to Dennis Healey's fa famous quote tax the rich until the Pips squeak and at the moment it's Pips squeaking yes pain unpleasantness and that I'm just I I am just really surprised Camila that there just has not been a more ambitious tone to what this country should be welcome back well on cigarettes and Vapes let's have a little trip down memory lane first make a place for the smokers and a place for the nonsmokers that segregated off not herders out here like bloody Smoking ban prostitutes standing on this corner which is what you feel like when you're standing here with a cigarette in your hand well that was a group of being go players uh outside a club in Stoke in 2007 the year just 17 years ago when the last Labor government banned smoking inside now kir starma has said he wants to investigate Banning smoking and Vapes outside in Pub Gardens outside restaurants possibly in a lot of places bar your back Garden he's so like he's not just just a socialist and to be fair this was a point made in an editorial meeting this morning he's such an authoritarian socialist isn't he I was former director of public prosecutions I set the rules don't break them it's just too much okay smoking we can both agree is a bit silly now it's a bit 1980s we all know the risks it's like the sort of modern day equivalent of taking snuff you look at people who smoke and you're thinking come on you know better than this but to also ban vaping Cal in Pub Gardens okay we can have a different debate about vaping and children and all the rest of it but vaping is meant to be a smoking cessation thing that stops people from inhaling tobacco and tar and all the rest of it what harm is there to be vaping in a pub Garden I I get that we both get saturated with the fumes of salted caramel or bubble gum or whatever lemonade but but if you cannot smoke in a pub Garden in Britain where can what is left so I am I am a little conflicted on this because I do like to think of myself as a liberal with a small L people should have freedom but I do find it quite attractive the idea that the UK could be a nonsmoking country of course uh don't forget under rishy sunak uh he wanted to put through legislation that would stop anyone over the um born after 2009 buying cigarettes so in the end back to the lasto why why are the Tories introducing stuff that labor then happily doubles down on again this is indicative of Tory drift imagine Thatcher advocating a smoking ban outside this is the kind of thing that is introduced and endorsed by the very same people who thought it was a good idea to wear covid masks in the countryside you know those people you will have walked past them because I did they're wearing a mask in the middle of an open field okay this is nonsense also it's it's sort of wrong-headed because I think a bigger concern particularly among young people these days is smoking cannabis and taking Coke somebody told me a young person actually used to be a former PT of mine young man in his 20s P personal trainer did a bit of boxing with him great great guy and he was telling me you know these days in pubs no one smokes anymore everyone's just making Coke and I sort of went what what are you talking about and he said well Coke it's just so freely available you'd more likely if you were going out to a pub on a Friday or Saturday night as a person in your early 20s take Coke then go outside and have a cigarette so I then thought that's interesting I just looked it up on the on data board so to speak office for National statistics thank you so much the number of 16 to 59 year olds taking class A drugs is actually up 29% since 2013 which I just think is interesting so we can go out in the streets of Britain and readily seemingly smoke and read readily seemingly smell cannabis on every street corner you can go to the pub and snort coat to your heart's content but it's a problem for you to Vape in a garden I think it's a bit of a contradiction on the conservative side so the conservatives like to Bellow about Freedom unless it's freedom to smoke cannabis which they're very angry about in the main so there a little contrad but just to finish my point on rishy sunak uh and his plans um which labor have taken on and as you say Comm now doubl down on to stop anyone uh born after 2009 buying cigarettes legally it would put the UK ahead of all other countries in becoming smoke free and given the cost the health costs which have been put at about 2.9 billion pounds a year of smoking and obviously the individual health impact of smoking when we only receive about 9.5 billion pounds in revenue from smok sming taxes I think as a choice not the first thing I'd do to be frank Camilla but given we are where we are I would do that what I find where they have overstepped and this goes into your authoritarian point is vaping vaping is not the same level of risk they don't seem to be able to manage where is the right point at which we say smoking is bad and all the evidence there vaping is much more of a broader conversation because they can't they're so Keen to be so nanny state that they can't see the wood for the trees probably Nigel faraj has responded to this ban in the telegraph he's written for us what do you think he said I'm very keen to hear he has said I will never visit a pub again if this happens which might be quite good for the rest of us come on now now you would enjoy a P with him if you only gave it some of your time and maybe accompanied that with a of nuts so this is the other big question the conservatives actually to be fair to them the conservatives having seemingly said nothing much about Labor's tax Rises and supported the they love this one catnip King Tory bingo card well and fully well truly back on the table um and they've made the point that this is going to adversely harm pubs they're saying that pubs have already had a hard time 11,000 have closed down since last smoking ban we can't necessarily say how many of them closed down because of the smoking ban although we have quoted Kate Nichols who is the head of UK Hospitality in some of our coverage on the website this morning and she said in the decade since the smoking ban was introduced in indoor areas we saw the loss of 10% of our pubs and nightclubs around 7,000 businesses closed so pubs have had a hard time in general I do think that this is if you were a landlord of a pub you'd be really really worried about this this not least if Nel farage is no longer going to come in and order 15 gin and tonics but just like with the tax debate how people divide across the political Spectrum has changed I would imagine so we asked you what you thought about the ban 52% said they were against it but 48% said they supported Banning smoking and vaping outside that is a very surprising response from Telegraph readers which may be a hangover from covid this is the point I'm making people have become used to being told what to do which I find a bit depressing I also think that people are now more interested in their health and they're more interested in what happened for a lot of the pub industry that had to completely change with the smoking ban the slightly cliched male Drinker sitting at the bar having a uh Windows you couldn't see through the fug of smoke now pubs Gastro Pub families many many more women now go to pubs pubs are now much more of a um a venue which is familyfriendly I know but I'm now thinking we're all eating so many portions of hameg and chips that obesity is now a bigger problem than smoking this is the other thing we've got Kia starma quoted today journalist have asked him in Paris he's doing it for the NHS obesity is a bigger problem for the NHS than smoking's ever going to be but you have to eat you don't have to Tinned carbonara eat junk food so why don't we ban sugar why don't we ban McDonald's why don't we ban anything that's bad for us that's how far if you let the you know Nanny you start they'll come after you I know in the end they're going to come after our scon and our sausage rolls our sausage rolls I don't know Camila whether you would also include tin Goods in that list of watch out for the Socialists they're coming for you McDonald's but something else that has caused a huge amount of debate and I want to ask you given your Italian Heritage about this Hines have announced I'm always want to laugh on this spaghetti carbonara in a tin oh oh the conflict in my mind Kamal I love this I'm like I am a little bit Italian but not that much can I just say you know some people claim it's like Joe Biden claiming how Irish he is my great grandmother was Italian bernardetta Maria de mambro from froon near Rome and my family heritage is that we did have an Italian ice cream company so I'm Italian enough all we've got Camila I'm basically sudin Yorkshire so you're going to have to be the Italian for this tell tell you what disturbs me about this although can I just say I quite like a little tin of Hines ravioli is that bad with a bit of grated cheese actually will you write to us on the daily tea telegraph.co.uk in our meeting this morning at 10:00 I was saying to quite um to faces of non-comprehension amongst our young team I remember tins as anyone else remember this tins of what was called London breakfast this was a tin which I'm sure had bacon sausage beans possibly some form of egg or maybe bread product in a tin so you just eat it up a whole cooked breakfast in a tin maybe some mushrooms SS I don't know why it was called a London breakfast I don't know did London particularly have that trust you to like that you metropolitans Elite but um on tin Goods I don't carbonara is hard you know carbonara to make people think you put cream in it and stuff no you don't it's an egg based it's an egg based dish um and it's easy to get wrong so let's hope Hines have got it right this is a killer question so say it's it's it's late on a Sunday you haven't been bothered to cook you want to get something out of a tin you look in the armed cupboard of tin do you gravitate towards beans or spaghetti Hoops always beans right they seem slightly more nutritious I used to I give you gas that's the trouble used we used to live with a a very good friend of mine and we used to have what was called the 1970s cupboard and that was full of frazzles beans London breakfast shredded Wheats and racists and you'd often go there late at night to get a sort of something that you aren't really allowed to eat anymore but actually was quite a lot of fun oh wow like spam and fre bentos so you'd have your beans and would you grate cheese on them just for clarification I find that a bit heavy like a bean beans on a nice piece of whole meal bread with some butter is actually a very nutritious meal and this carbonara in a tin has immediately become part of our endless culture wars because apparently the reason for it is lazy gen zedas who can't be bothered to cook and want to just put a tin of stuff in a sauce feckless youngsters how dare they what we need to do next week Hines if you're listening send us a tin I think we need to have a taste test in the daily te Studio possibly with somebody who's a little bit more Italian than even you oh how dare you [Music]