We’re raising wages and growing the economy… and no one is going to get in our way

KITSON’S butchers in Northallerton does the best pork and apple pie in the country.

Trust me, it’s delicious. But for me, the family-run shop in North Yorkshire is also the perfect expression of the British grit, graft and passion that power so many small businesses across our country, giving joy to its customers, a living to its staff and prosperity to its community.

As Prime Minister, I’m lucky enough to visit thousands of small businesses across the country, to meet their hard-working employees, to hear the stories of how they came together.

I see the hours they put in to provide for their families and build a better future for us all.

It is my determination that their hard work is rewarded.

This is personal for me. My mum ran a pharmacy, and as a teenager I did my bit for the family business, delivering prescriptions and helping with the books.

My mum is retired now but that experience left me with a lasting respect for every small business.

The Conservative Party, the party of the grocer’s daughter and the pharmacist’s son, will always be the party of enterprise, the party of small business, the party that believes ambition and aspiration should be celebrated and hard work rewarded.

This isn’t some promise for the distant future, it is something we are delivering on right now. Just take a look at your January pay cheque.

Because of the disciplined way we have run the economy, we have been able to cut National Insurance for 27 million working people — starting this month.

As a result, someone on the average wage will take home £450 more this year.

Boosting growth

Where we can, we will always prioritise tax cuts to put more of people’s money back in their pockets.

There is no doubt that Covid and the global instability we have seen, with war in Ukraine and the Middle East, have made life tougher for people over the past couple of years.

That is why I’ve been working flat out to get the economy back on track — by halving inflation, reducing debt and boosting growth.

We have made decent progress. In just 12 months, inflation has fallen from 11.1 per cent to four per cent.

Wages are rising faster than prices. And the economy has done better than predicted, outperforming European neighbours including Germany.

We have cut taxes on business investment by £11billion, something described by hundreds of business leaders as the single most transformational thing we could do for business investment and growth. That shows the UK is the right place to invest.

Just look at Nissan announcing it will manufacture new electric vehicles in Sunderland, Orsted building the world’s biggest offshore wind farm off the coast of Grimsby and Microsoft doubling its footprint in the UK.

Our tech sector is double the size of anywhere else in Europe and we now have a bigger manufacturing industry than France.

Spending spree

Of course, there is more to do and there will be bumps in the road. Inflation doesn’t come down in a straight line.

But because of the progress we have made, we have been able to afford tax cuts as part of our plan to reward work and grow the economy.

As well as the National Insurance cut, we have changed the tax rules so you can now earn £1,000 a month without paying any tax or National Insurance at all.

We have frozen fuel duty for motorists. We have also capped bus fares at £2, helped parents back to work with 30 hours’ free childcare for children over the age of nine months and delivered the biggest ever increase in the National Living Wage, putting us on track to end low pay in this country.

We are also working to safeguard our energy security and keep down your bills.

I want us to get to net zero by 2050, but in an affordable way that commands your support.

That’s why I have introduced changes that will save households thousands of pounds.

Labour, by contrast, are opposed to bolstering our energy security — they don’t want more British oil and gas — and they would put the costs of getting to net zero on your shoulders.

The economy is beginning to turn a corner.

That’s why we need to stick to the plan, to deliver the long-term change our country needs.

And we won’t let those who use every opportunity to do Britain down get in our way — especially those in the Labour Party who berate our country every day and are hell-bent on sabotaging this government’s determination to control our borders and deliver on the priorities of the people.

All Keir Starmer offers on the economy is a £28billion spending spree that would take us back to square one.

Starmer can’t say how he is going to pay for this spending — which is twice what we spend on the police in England — because he doesn’t have a plan.

And because he doesn’t have a plan for how to pay for it, he would have to put up your taxes to cover the costs.

So instead of going back to square one with Keir Starmer, who can’t say what he’d do because he doesn’t have a plan, let’s keep working to build a stronger economy — one where hard work is rewarded and everyone has the opportunity to succeed.

That is the future the British people deserve.

The choice is clear — tax cuts with me or tax rises with Starmer.