Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves during a visit to a Jaguar Land Rover car factory in Birmingham in April.

Rachel Reeves could not have been clearer as she delivered her first Budget last October.

The chancellor told MPs that she had considered whether or not to maintain the freeze on income tax and National Insurance thresholds, which were brought in by the Tories and are due to stay in place until 2029.

The effect of the policy is to drag millions of workers into higher tax bands when their pay goes up, raising tens of billions of pounds for the Treasury in the process.

But critics say this is a stealth tax, a sneaky way of giving the chancellor more money to spend without having to increase the rate of income tax or National Insurance.

Reeves told the Commons that under Labour, this practice would end.

“Extending their threshold freeze for a further two years raises billions of pounds,” she said.

“Money to deal with the black hole in our public finances, and repair our public services.

“Having considered this issue closely, I have come to the conclusion that extending the threshold freeze would hurt working people. It would take money out of their payslips.

“I am keeping every single promise on tax that I made in our manifesto. So........

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