Ed Balls tells Labour Party conference that a bank bonus tax would pay for homes and create jobs for 100,000 young people

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls has called for a repeat of the bank bonus tax to pay for the construction of 25,000 new homes, and the bringing forward of school and transport construction jobs.

Balls used his inaugural Labour Party conference speech as shadow chancellor to call for a rethink from the coalition government on cutting spending, and outlined five key moves to increase economic growth.

The five moves he called for were:

  • Repeat the bank bonus tax to pay for 25,000 new homes and a job guarantee for 100,000 young people
  • Bring forward long term investment projects on schools, roads and transport
  • Cut VAT to 5% on home improvement and refurbishment
  • Reverse January’s overall VAT rise
  • Cut in national insurance for any firm which takes on new workers

Balls also used his speech to apologise for some of New Labour’s economic failures, and call for fiscal discipline from any future labour government.

Balls said the UK was currently facing “the darkest, most dangerous times for the global economy in my lifetime.”

He said: “Our country - the whole of the world - is facing a threat that most of us have only ever read about in the history books - a lost decade of economic stagnation.

“The world must remeber the lesson of the 1930s: that there is no credibility in piling austerity on austerity, tax rise on tax rise, cut upon cut in the eventual hope that it will work when all the evidence is pointng the other way.”

More soon…

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