Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:55 pm on 18 October 2022.
First Minister, Liz Truss's u-turns this week were so numerous and so breathtakingly rapid that they became a political pirouette. But she wasn't the only one, was she? Three weeks ago, Keir Starmer said that Labour wouldn't reverse the cut to the basic rate of income tax, it would be the wrong thing to do. Now, this morning, the shadow Chancellor said that Labour supported the policy to bin it. So, in supporting the Tory u-turn, Labour has performed its own. But she also went on to say that Labour wouldn't raise taxes in response to the current crisis, which begs the question, doesn't it, as to where a Labour Government will get all the resources necessary to defend public services, to do something about the crisis in the NHS here in Wales, through the Barnett formula consequential, and to pay public sector workers a decent wage. Labour, in 1997, they said they were going to keep to the Tory spending plans for the first two years, and were rightly criticised for doing so. How is keeping to the Tories' tax plans any better?