Kemi Badenoch announces tax cut plans ahead of Conservative Conference speech

Kemi Badenoch has pledged to halve employer national insurance on jobs worked by young people ahead of a party conference speech which is expected to focus on tax cuts.

Mrs Badenoch will take to the stage in Birmingham on the final day of the Conservative Party Conference, and is expected to announce plans to reduce inheritance tax should the Tories win the next election.

She is expected to say: “Growing the economy will be the central organising principle of the next Conservative government.

Mrs Badenoch will describe Andy Burnham as creating a “tax doom loop that is making us all poorer”.

“Your taxes will be higher, your bills will go up, you will find it harder and harder to make ends meet,” she will say about the new Prime Minister’s spending commitments.

The Tories have focused heavily on tax cuts this conference. Andrew Griffith, the new Shadow Chancellor, has pledged to axe the mansion tax.

And ahead of her speech, Mrs Badenoch announced that employer’s national insurance would be slashed in half in jobs for young people.

Currently, almost a million 16 to 24-year-olds are not in education, employment or training, so called Neets.

The flat rate for businesses would be slashed from 15 per cent to 7.5 per cent for workers aged 21 to 24 at an estimated cost of £2.3bn, the Conservatives said.

Mrs Badenoch insisted the plan was “fiscally credible” as party officials said they would publish a “savings plan” setting out how it would be funded.

They said the move would put tens of thousands of young people in jobs, meaning that many claiming out-of-work benefits would instead contribute taxes to the Exchequer.

The “static” cost of the policy has been calculated as £3.25bn, which officials estimate would fall to a “dynamic” cost of £2.3bn in 2029-30 once extra tax receipts and lower universal credit spending were counted.

In a series of broadcast interviews, Mrs Badenoch said there was a “graduate recruitment crisis” that needed to be fixed as she faced questions about why the rate would be left the same for most employees.

“We are being fiscally credible. We find savings and then we spend it. If I could afford to cut it for everybody, I promise you that I would. But young people have a much worse problem than everybody else,” she told the BBC.

A Labour spokesperson said: “This is yet more fantasy economics from the Tories.

“Kemi Badenoch pretends to be on the side of young people but her party allowed nearly one million of the next generation to be locked out of work or training.

“It’s no surprise her Shadow Chancellor wants another unfunded tax cut given he co-wrote Liz Truss’ mini-Budget that crashed the economy.

“The Tories can never be trusted with Britain’s public finances or the life chances of young people again.”