Your report says Rachel Reeves “has few options left” (How did it come to this? Labour’s journey from landslide victory to ‘deep unhappiness’, 22 March), but in fact she has numerous options. Patriotic Millionaires, alongside Tax Justice UK, has proposed 10 tax reforms to raise £60bn for public services. And on 18 March, it told MPs that a tax of 2% on wealth above £10m could raise £460m a week for our country’s crumbling finances.
Prof Richard Murphy has identified at least seven alternatives for Reeves, saying that to pretend the only options are higher taxes or austerity is wrong. And Prof Helen Goodman (Letters, 21 March) even identifies around £35bn in savings from three simple taxation reforms.
Both Reeves and Keir Starmer cite morality to justify their cuts. But where’s the morality or justice when the UK has the highest proportion of billionaire wealth derived from monopolies and cronyism among G7 countries and UK billionaires saw their collective wealth increase last year by £35m a day to £182bn as four new billionaires were created, taking the total to 57, and the queues for food banks continue to grow?
Unequal societies, the IMF and OECD have found, grow more slowly than more equal nations, and social mobility collapses in countries riddled with inequality. Tax reform can address inequality, so is better for growth, and it will raise the money that Reeves says Britain needs. What’s stopping her?
David Murray
Wallington, London
Despite what the chancellor might think, the Office for Budget Responsibility’s updated forecasts do not provide her with “ammunition to justify the welfare cuts”, especially when she has other options (Reeves under pressure as UK borrowing sharply exceeds forecasts, 21 March).
Rejecting a wealth tax because it is easy for the rich to move their assets offshore is simply another attempt to deflect attention from this government’s outright refusal to tackle inequality.
Reminding MPs about Liz Truss’s disastrous fiscal statement and that it was working people who paid the price is also shameful. That mini-budget focused on reducing taxes and increasing borrowing, neither of which is necessary in this week’s spring statement.
Does the country want to hear about hedge fund managers celebrating again after Rachel Reeves’s fiscal announcements, as they did last October? At the very least, capital gains and income tax should be equalised, tax loopholes enjoyed by limited liability partnerships closed, and uncollected billions from loopholes targeted.
Labour MPs must not accept any cuts. Have they not read about families being worse off in 2030 or modern economists discrediting trickle-down economics, or even seen the polls? They are sleepwalking into disaster, which will start in Runcorn and Helsby.
Bernie Evans
Liverpool
I read John Harris’s account of shadowing a personal care provider in Bury (Opinion, 23 March) with tears in my eyes for the 93-year-old woman who stands to lose her daily care visit if, or when, the care agency is forced to withdraw its services for lack of funding. The tears are still flowing, but now they’re prompted by anger at the assertion, in an editorial on the same day, that Rachel Reeves is making “enthusiastic noises” about substantial help in funding Manchester United’s new stadium, 15 miles from the woman whose negligible human contact looks set to be a casualty of spending cuts.
Elizabeth Atkinson
London