Treasury's "Problematic" National Insurance Cut Claim May Breach Whitehall Rules

Government has been accused of making misleading claims after a Treasury social media post about how much money workers will take home as a result of the cut to National Insurance has been viewed as a breach of civil service rules.

On Sunday, a post by the Treasury on X, the social media website formerly known as Twitter, stated that an average worker "now earns an extra £450" due to the government decision to reduce National Insurance contributions by two per cent. The policy, announced in the Autumn Budget, came into effect on Saturday.

A community note added to the Treasury post by X's moderators said it was "misleading" because it does not take into account the full tax picture, like the impact of tax thresholds being frozen on workers' take home pay. Olly Bartrum, a senior economist at the Institute for Government think tank, said on X that the department "pushing this stuff out with no mention of larger income tax rises is really dishonest".

Alex Thomas, a programme director at the IfG specialising in the civil service, said it was a "problematic" post which appeared to breach Whitehall guidance stating that commucation "should be objective and explanatory" and should not "oversell" government policy.

“That tweet, to me, is overselling the position on cutting taxes overall," he told PoliticsHome.

“I found the Treasury tweet to be on the problematic side of that line and I would have thought that the director of communications would like to look quite carefully at that. It’s not the most outrageous thing in the world, but there are ways they could have presented that differently."

Hannah Smith, at fact-checker at Full Fact, told PoliticsHome the Treasury tweet misses "important context" as it ignores the impact of other