News / Politics
Darren Jones says Rishi Sunak ‘lied to the British people’
The incumbent MP for Bristol North West is at the centre of a huge row following the first television debate of the general election campaign.
Shadow deputy chief secretary to the Treasury, Darren Jones, who hopes to regain his seat in July, received a letter from the Treasury confirming that a figure quoted by Rishi Sunak during Monday’s debate on ITV was not authorised by civil servants as claimed by the prime minister.
Writing on X, Jones said: “In response to my letter, civil servants confirmed they had told Tory ministers they were not allowed to say their dodgy attacks on Labour were independently done by civil servants. Last night Rishi Sunak did it anyway. He lied to the British people. He must apologise.”
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In the debate against Labour leader Keir Starmer, Sunak claimed that “independent Treasury officials” were behind his repeated claim that Labour would raises taxes for every family by £2,000.
But in a letter written to Jones by permanent secretary at the Treasury, James Bowler, it was revealed that this figure “should not be presented as having been produced by the civil service”.
Jones and many Labour Party colleagues say that Sunak should apologise for lying 12 times during about Labour’s tax plans during the at-times fractious debate.
But the Conservatives appear unrepentant, with a Tory spokesperson telling the BBC that the party had been “fair to Labour in the production of the Labour’s tax rise briefing note and used only clear Labour policies, their own costings or official HMT costings using the lowest assumptions”.
Main photo: X
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