Barry Ward

There's two things.

Firstly, cutting the lower rate is actually more expensive because it affects everyone, whereas cutting the top rate is more doable.

Also, we talk about the top rate.

Yes, we're talking about the top rate.

You're talking nurses, guards, teachers, they are in the top rate.

So it affects a huge cohort of hard-working people.

How do you pay for it?

Well, there's lots of ways of paying for it.

As I say, it's not quite as expensive as Barra makes out.

But the first thing is... Okay, let's call it a billion.

Yeah, the desire to do it is always there.

The ability to do it is not always there.

And it'll depend on what comes out of the Summer Economic Statement as to how feasible it is or isn't.

But the reality is that every budget...

The government makes political choices and economic choices that have to be balanced.

And I'm not suggesting that we would cut the top rate of tax and just borrow that money, for example, or massively increase the instability of the economic projections for next year.

That's not what we're talking about.

What we're talking about is a policy where we recognise the fact that hardworking people are paying more tax here in income tax at the top or marginal rate than they need to.

And we should be setting out a priority to reduce that.

Not necessarily.