IFS says party manifestos ‘largely ignored’ the raw facts about the public finances

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), an independent economics think tank, has criticised the Conservatives and Labour for failing to be honest with voters in their manifestos.

Launching its analysis of the parties’ promises, the Director of the IFS, Paul Johnson, said the raw facts about the public finances are “largely ignored” by both. He said they were “keeping entirely silent about their commitment to a £10 billion a year tax rise through a further three years of freezes to personal tax allowances and thresholds”.

Mr Johnson also cast doubt on the parties’ claims to have published “so-called ‘fully costed’ manifestos”.

We do not assess this point ourselves in our fact checks of all the main parties’ manifestos. 

But Labour’s does say “our plan for Britain is a fully costed, fully funded, credible plan”, while the Conservatives say “the measures in this manifesto are fully funded”.

Yet when asked whether this was true on the BBC’s Today programme this morning, Mr Johnson said: “No. I think it’s fair to say they’re not.”

Mr Johnson also criticised some of the other parties, for instance saying that proposals from Reform UK and the Green Party were “wholly unattainable [and help] to poison the entire political debate.”