Election: Boris Johnson suggests Tories will offer National Insurance cut to workers

Prime minister’s announcement seemed to come as result of a slip of the tongue

The Conservative election manifesto could include a hike in National Insurance thresholds to £12,000, Boris Johnson has suggested.

The announcement appeared to be the result of a slip of the tongue by the prime minister during a visit to a factory in the northeast.

Mr Johnson was challenged by a worker at the fabrication plant in Middlesbrough, who demanded to know whether the lower taxes promised by the Conservatives would be “for people like you… or people like us”.

He insisted that he wanted “low tax for working people”.

And he added: “If you look at what we are doing, and what I said in the last few days, we are going to be cutting National Insurance up to 12,000.”

It was not immediately clear whether the £12,000 figure – which would be worth around £400 a year to workers by increasing the amount they can earn before paying national insurance – represented a firm commitment.

The prime minister said in an interview during the Tory leadership contest that lifting the national insurance threshold – currently £8,632 – was a “priority”, after he came under attack for floating an £8bn tax break for the better-off through an increase to £80,000 in the threshold for the higher rate of income tax.

Earlier this week, Mr Johnson shelved a £6bn plan to cut corporation tax from 19 to 17 per cent, in a move designed to build up a war chest for spending on investment and tax cuts.

During Mr Johnson’s visit to the Teesside engineering plant, a female worker asked him: “When you say low tax, do you mean low tax for people like you or low tax for people like us?”

He replied: “I mean low tax for people of the working people.

“If you look at what we are doing, we are going to be cutting national insurance up to 12,000, we are going to be making sure that we cut business rates for small businesses. We are cutting tax for working people.”

Mr Johnson’s arrival at the factory was greeted by a small demonstration of around a dozen people, who chanted: “Liar, liar, liar”.