Jeremy Corbyn has defended his multibillion pound general election spending pledge on public services, arguing it would bring the UK into line with other industrial countries, including France and Germany.
After the launch of the Conservative manifesto on Sunday it emerged that for every one pound Boris Johnson has committed to spending, Jeremy Corbyn would spend £28.
“At the end of all of our proposals – every single one carried out – we will still be spending less on public services than France or Germany. We won’t even be at their levels. It will move us into the middle ranking of the spending of industrial countries,” the Labour leader said at a campaign event at West Nottinghamshire College in Kirkby-in-Ashfield.
Corbyn is promising widespread investment in public services at almost £83bn a year, including £5bn each for schools and early years and £10.8bn on social-care spending in an effort to reverse some of the impact of austerity. The party is also pledging payouts for women affected by the rise in the state-pension age with a £58bn spending commitment over five years.
“We cannot go on underfunding education and not see the price. We cannot go on not investing in housing and not see the price. We cannot go on underfunding health and social care and not see the price,” Corbyn said.
“Yes people are being strained by the price of austerity through poverty and homelessness. The middle class, middle-aged, also pay because they are having to support their kids through university. But if we care as a society, an inclusive society, we have to be prepared to invest to achieve.”
According to data collected by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, France, Italy, Sweden, Greece and Germany all dedicate more of their GDP to public spending on social goods than the UK at rates of between 25 and 31%. This includes investment in health, old age, incapacity-related benefits, family, work programmes, unemployment and housing.
The UK spends 21% of its GDP on public services, which is slightly more than the US at 19%, according to worldwide data collected in 2016.
Corbyn denied that anyone earning less than £80,000 a year would be taxed any more under a Labour majority government. “The tax rates will go up for those in the top 5%,” he said. “Corporation tax will go up. Inheritance rate will change, we’ve made that very, very, clear. The majority – 95% of the population – will pay no more.
“We have a seriously costed manifesto. You can’t do it without raising the money from somewhere and we think it’s only right to do that.”
The money they have pledged to spend helping women born between 1950 and 1960, who saw the state pension age rise dramatically and their retirement date delayed, will be paid for from “contingencies”, Corbyn said.
He said: “It is obviously additional. We take it from government contingencies over a tapered period. But I think it’s a moral issue. The Waspi women were shortchanged both in the 90s when the legislation first went through, but particularly in 2011 when there was this massive speedup of it, which they didn’t know about.”
Asked if he was going to release details of costings, the Labour leader said: “Yes.”
Pushed for a date, he said: “No, I can’t give you a time for that. The costing overall, you have the figures for. The amount of money varies between individuals, and the women I met this morning, it varies between £30,000 and just under £60,000 that they have lost. Unfortunately some of them have serious health conditions and they will get priority.”
Corbyn was spending the day campaigning in the Labour marginal seat of Ashfield, held by just 441 votes, and later in Broxtowe, the seat held by the ex-Tory minister Anna Soubry, who left the Conservatives to form the party Change UK. She holds the seat by 863 votes.
