Rishi Sunak is considering performing a reverse Robin Hood to help fund further tax cuts in the run-up to the next general election.
The prime minister could roll the dice on a last-ditch attempt to get voters on side before he is forced to go to the polls by scrapping national insurance.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt used his Budget to set out a 2p cut in national insurance from April with a vague promise to eventually deliver a simpler tax system by eventually getting rid of it altogether.
But details of how the government plans to pay for the plan have remained vague… until now.
Sunak is believed to be considering cutting the welfare bill to deliver the election-boosting pledge, which is effectively the equivalent of taking from the poor and giving to those better off.
Speaking to reporters, he said: “We now have almost 2.5 million working-age people who have been signed off as unfit to work or even look for work or think about working and I don’t think that’s right.
“We now sign off three times as many people to be out of work than we did a decade ago. That just doesn’t strike me as a system that’s working properly.”
Yet even if the Tories manage to find the wiggle room to fund further tax cuts, there’s scant evidence to suggest that it could boost their election hopes.
The 2p cut in national insurance, which follows a similar measure in November, appears to have done little to revive their fortunes.
An Opinium poll put Labour 16 points ahead, with Sir Keir Starmer’s party on 41 per cent and the Tories on 25 per cent.
The survey of 2,054 UK adults from March 6 to 8 found 38 per cent thought it was a bad Budget, while only 18 per cent rated it as good and 44 per cent were not sure.
The April timing of the national insurance cut has fuelled speculation about a May general election, but Mr Sunak, whose working assumption is for an election in the second half of 2024, said: “I stand exactly by what I said at the beginning of the year on timing.”
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