On LBC today Angela Rayner got her own department’s policy wrong by claiming that Labour has cut VAT for some businesses. Have a look at this transcript:
LBC: And Andy Burnham writes in one of the newspapers today, The Daily Mirror, that he’d like to see the return of butchers and bakers and bookshops, and we all agree with that. But as James Cleverley, your political rival, says, just because you closed down a vape shop, Angela, it doesn’t mean automatically it’s going to reopen as a butcher’s, does it?
RAYNER: No, it doesn’t, and that’s one of the reasons that Andy Burnham announced the cuts to VAT for some businesses and that he wants to go further to support businesses on the high street. You know, shopping types of the way in which we shop has changed over time. I travel up and down the country. In some parts of the country, I see lots of independent shops. In other parts, it’s not as easy to see them. So we want to see our high streets invigorate and that’s why we’ve put an extra five billion pound into Pride of Place funding so that we can really revitalise our high streets, as well as crack down on the gambling and vaping shops that people don’t want to say.
Burnham had announced a one-fifth cut to business rates for some venues like night clubs and pubs – though not hotels and restaurants which are suffering the worst from those rates. You might hope the Housing Secretary – who deals with the high street – would know the difference between those two taxes…
A Tory source said: “Angela Rayner in a muddle with the tax system? Some things never change.” Indeed…
Lord Khan in the Telegraph: “I hope, and I say this in a non-pompous way, that the public service I do will bring rewards in this world and the hereafter,” he says. “I’m hoping the work I do is earning me Brownie points.”