Torsten Bell, Treasury Minister (Image: PA)
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has recruited a radical policy guru who backs higher taxes and scrapping the pension triple lock to help her draw up a make-or-break Budget. Pensions Minister Torsten Bell, former head of think tank the Resolution Foundation, has been given a new role overseeing economic policy and helping the Chancellor prepare November’s Budget statement.
He has previously backed pushing up council tax, increasing taxes on withdrawals from private pensions and changing inheritance tax to hand the Treasury an additional ￡4.8 billion every year. Shadow Chancellor, Sir Mel Stride said: “Labour’s latest appointment confirms their intent - higher taxes, more borrowing, and punishing success. Torsten Bell has previously proposed taxing homes, hiking fuel duty, and driving up council tax. He wants to tax your future to pay for Rachel Reeves’ failure.”
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Dennis Reed, Director of campaigning group Silver Voices, said: “With Torsten Bell in the side-saddle for Rachel Reeves, it would be worrying if he sees older people on low or medium incomes as a way of raising money.”
The autumn Budget comes after unemployment hit a four-year high, with 1.6 million looking for work, and inflation rose to 3.8%, almost double the official target. Here are some of the ideas backed by Mr Bell:
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1) Mr Bell, a former senior adviser to Net Zero Secretary Ed Miliband, described the triple lock as “indefensible” and called for it to be axed, in his role as Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation in 2020.
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He co-authored a paper urging the Government “to replace the triple lock, and pay more attention to the contrast with working-age benefits”.
The triple lock protects pensioner incomes by ensuring the state pension rises in line with inflation, earnings or by 2.5 percent, whichever is higher.
2) In May 2024 he called for an end to the two-child cap on benefits, a policy backed by many Labour backbenchers but so far rejected by Ms Reeves, saying it would “immediately lift about half a million children out of poverty”.
3) In 2019 he said the maximum amount that can be taken tax-free from private pensions should be cut from ￡250,000 to ￡40,000, which would effectively increase taxes paid by people who managed to build up a substantial pension pot.
4) He praised a 2018 Resolution Foundation paper calling for inheritance tax to be replaced by a lifetime tax on gifts, which could include money from parents to help children put down the deposit on a home. This would raise ￡4.8 billion more than Inheritance Tax in one year.
5) Mr Bell suggested in 2019 that England and Wales could copy “the marginally improved Scottish structure” after the SNP increased council tax on band E,F, G and H properties north of the border, in an effort to ensure the wealthiest householders pay more.
6) In 2020 he said: “We should stop freezing fuel duty”.
7) While most of his tax-raising proposals were published before he became an MP, just last week Mr Bell refused to rule out hitting owners of high-value houses with capital gains tax (CGT) when they sell their family home.
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Chancellor Rachel Reeves is reported to be considering ending the current exemption from CGT for primary residences as she seeks ways to raise cash in the face of dire warnings about the state of the public finances.
A HM Treasury spokesperson said: "Having fixed the foundations by securing economic stability, the Chancellor and her team are focused on building an economy that delivers for working people.
"This government is committed to the Triple Lock."
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