Labour repeats claim counting tax rises since the last election

On Times Radio this morning, Labour’s shadow economic secretary to the Treasury, Tulip Siddiq, said “the government has actually increased taxes 25 times since the last election.” 

Later, at Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir Starmer appeared to add to the list. He said Rishi Sunak had “told every council in the country to put their council tax up by the maximum of 5%”, adding “that’s 26 tax rises now”.

These are variations of a claim we’ve heard regularly from Labour in recent months. We wrote about it last week.  

Full Fact obtained what appears to be the list of the 25 tax rises, but we don’t know why Labour selected these specific measures for inclusion. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has said there have likely been hundreds of revenue-raising tax changes (as well as cuts) taking effect since 2019.