Minister appears to repeat claim Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said she won’t reverse changes to National Insurance

On BBC Question Time last night, skills minister Jacqui Smith, Baroness Smith of Malvern, appeared to repeat a claim we’ve already heard from the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, that Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has said she wouldn’t reverse the increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions. 

However, as we’ve already pointed out, there’s no evidence that Ms Badenoch said this. 

Baroness Smith said to shadow housing secretary Kevin Hollinrake: “Your leader said she wasn’t going to reverse the National Insurance changes”. (While this isn’t perfectly audible, we believe this is what she said and have asked her for confirmation).  

Mr Hollinrake immediately replied: “That’s not what she said at all, Jacqui”.

Last month, when asked if she would reverse the policy, Ms Badenoch didn’t say if she would or wouldn’t do that. She said if something had been introduced in the Autumn Budget that “will obviously not work and will not raise any money, we will change that”. 

Later, she said “one of the first things that we’re going to be doing when we start our policy platform” is “look again” at employers’ National Insurance. 

We’ve written to Baroness Smith asking for her evidence for this claim, and will update this post if we receive a response.