Rising Living Costs

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:21 pm on 11 January 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:21, 11 January 2022

I thank her for drawing attention to the Robin Hood tax—the Tobin tax, as it was sometimes called—to which I have always, myself, been attracted; a very small tax on a very large number of transactions, which would result in a very significant additional inflow of funds into the UK Treasury, which could be used in exactly the circumstances that the Member outlined.

She's right to say that we focused on the fuel price rises. They are not just the cap. The cap was raised by £139 only last October. It could be raised by £500 in April. It's not only that and the £100 that every family will have to pay to deal with the market failure that the Conservative Government presided over, but if you were on a fixed-price tariff with one of those firms that has collapsed, you won't be on a fixed-price tariff with the company that's taken you on. You will now be exposed to the rise in the cap as well. That's why Jane Dodds is right to point to the fact that £500 is by no means the maximum that many families in Wales will be exposed to.

And, it's not just the national insurance hike. Again, as Jane Dodds says, it is the effect of freezing income tax thresholds for the next four years, which will drag more and more families into the tax net at the very bottom end of the spectrum and draw people up the hierarchy of tax rates as they find that their income rises but the tax threshold stays the same. These are tax rises by stealth and they will hit families here in Wales. So, imaginative ideas such as the Robin Hood tax and such as the windfall tax, which Joyce Watson mentioned, these are choices available to the UK Government and they should exercise them.