Is Rishi Sunak 'Mr 25 tax rises'? We check Labour’s claim

At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, Sir Keir Starmer told the Commons that Rishi Sunak is “Mr 25 tax rises”. 

This is a claim we’ve heard repeatedly from Labour in recent weeks, often with the caveat that these 25 tax rises have occurred since the last general election. Several shadow ministers have said it, and we’ve also seen it on Labour’s social media channels. 

While Labour haven’t publicly published the list of 25 tax rises, Full Fact was sent the list by shadow Treasury minister Lord Livermore. We wrote about it yesterday. 

It includes a range of tax changes that have occurred since 2019, but some—such as the windfall tax, or the temporary rise in National Insurance that occurred in 2022—are missing. 

We’re not sure how Labour arrived at their figure, and their press office has not responded to our queries about how the list was compiled.

However, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) told us that simply counting the number of rises “isn’t very interesting or meaningful”. The IFS also said that Labour’s analysis is likely to have missed a large number of specific tax rises, and that there have likely been hundreds of rises (and reductions) since 2019. 

A better measure for looking at tax rises, said the IFS, is looking at the total amount of tax raised, and this parliament “is the biggest tax-raising parliament in modern times”.