Rishi Sunak suggests cuts to working age benefits could lead to scrapping of national insurance

The Prime Minister has suggested that cuts working age benefits could pave the way for scrapping national insurance as part of the Conservative Party offer for voters.

Rishi Sunak said that “significant process” may be made to eliminate the tax in the next parliament if the Tories win the upcoming general election.

The Prime Minister set out plans to make cuts to working age benefits “to make sure that we can sustainably keep cutting taxes,” he said in an interview with the Sunday Times.

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Sunak has insisted that he is committed to scrapping the “unnecessarily complex” system of national insurance as well as income tax.

The Prime Minister told the Sunday Times, “All that money ultimately goes into the same pot to fund public services.

“So … our long-term ambition is to end that unfairness, to keep cutting NICs until it’s gone, because that is the best way to reward hard work, simplify the tax system, and build the kind of society that I think is right.”

Sunak added, “We’ve cut NICs by a third in two events over six months. So that demonstrates we are delivering and we can go further, though it’s important that we stick to the plan and then we can make significant progress towards that goal in the next parliament.”

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), cutting the welfare bill which is soon to rise from £261.5 billion 2022/23 to £360.1 billion in 2028/29 is key.

Sunak 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.”