Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Louise Haigh has insisted that mayors won’t be able to offer tax rebates after receiving control over a part of income tax receipts collected in local areas. Devolution only goes one way…
Haigh told Times Radio:
“To my knowledge, Ben hasn’t developed a rebate scheme and it’s not in their gift to set income tax or business rates. So we would anticipate that the money would be invested into public services and into growth schemes that benefit the community as a whole…
Mayors don’t have the ability and won’t have the ability under these plans to set income tax rates at a regional level … Those kind of schemes necessitate HMRC to set up full schemes. That’s just not possible at the moment. The way that the mayors are set up and to work is to reinvest the money into their public services, into their local economies. It’s not possible at the moment.”
So mayors are only allowed to spend money. How long can that line last?
Tax rebates will allow local areas to engage in tax competition which will increase productivity and produce an incentive to keep taxes low among local authorities. It works in the US…
Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked John Healey: “Just finally, I mean Andy Burnham has been very clear he wants Britain back in the European Union in his lifetime. Do you?”
The Chancellor replied: “I’m older than Andy Burnham. I don’t expect to see that.”