Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has today outlined the Conservative Party’s plans to block some of next year's planned National Insurance tax rises.

Labour will kill the recovery with their tax on working people – announced in last week’s Budget – but the Conservatives will cut Labour waste to stop it. Labour’s tax rises would hit anyone earning over £20,000 a year, destroy tens of thousands of jobs and put the recovery at risk. 7 out of 10 working people will be better off with the Conservatives than under Labour.

For the last 13 years, working people have seen their taxes go up and up and their money wasted. A real opportunity is approaching to rescue the country from its present decline.

• Labour’s planned rise in National Insurance next April will hit anyone earning over £20,000 a year and all jobs over £5,700.
• This tax threatens the recovery: leading business experts predict it could cost 57,000 jobs.
• We will cut waste to stop this tax rise altogether for anyone earning under £35,000 by raising the threshold at which National Insurance kicks in to protect those on lower incomes.
• Relative to Labour’s plans, everyone earning between about £7,000 and £45,000 will be better off by up to £150 a year. That is 7 out of 10 working people. Nobody will be worse off than under Labour. Thousands of jobs will be protected.
• We will also stop most of Labour’s tax rise on employers by raising the threshold at which it kicks in.
• To stop Labour’s tax on workers next year we will cut waste to make in year savings this year of £6 billion – less than £1 in every £100 that the government spends every year.
• Next year we will conduct a spending review to make further savings, on top of measures that we have already announced like a public sector pay freeze excluding the lowest paid 1 million.
• Our plans for savings this year are based on advice from Gordon Brown’s former advisers on efficiency – Sir Peter Gershon and Dr Martin Read – who are now advising the Conservatives.
• Across all government departments they think that £12 billion of savings can be made in-year without affecting front line services, by halting all major IT spending, renegotiating major contracts, controlling recruitment and cutting out discretionary spending.
• Part of the £12 billion of savings will be found in the health service and in overseas aid. We have made explicit commitments to protect these budgets, and so the money saved will be reinvested onto the frontline.
• We will carry out a strategic defence review and savings will be ploughed back into the frontline.