Now, you've announced this morning that you have a new policy which is essentially a tax break for workers doing overtime.
How are you going to make this work? It's going to be a bit complicated, isn't it?
I mean, what is overtime and who gets it and so on? Some people don't do overtime.
It's actually very simple, Trevor. Reform is for workers and we want to reward the hardest working people.
People who are going out every day, doing a 40-hour week and then choosing to go above and beyond in order to pay the bills or to save up for a deposit
or just to take the kids out for a meal at the end of the week or to go on a holiday or buy Christmas presents at the end of the year.
And these people are finding life very, very tough at the moment.
So under a reform government, if you go to your boss, you take on extra hours, you do that overtime, you won't pay any income tax at all.
Zero. It's a hard work bonus. It's going to increase the earnings of millions of households across the country.
It will be a big change, but it's one that I think will be welcome by so many people who are working very hard at the moment.
It sounds absolutely lovely, but if I were an employer, first thing I'd say is, yay, that means what I can do now is pay the first 40 hours at minimum wage
and then I can pay the overtime at some exorbitant rate and everybody wins except the taxman.
Well, I don't expect that's the way it's going to work and there'll obviously be anti-avoidance.
Well, why wouldn't it be? It benefits everybody except the public finances.
Well, we don't think that's what's going to happen. There will be anti-avoidance measures in place.
But our priority is making sure that working people get the incentive to take on those extra hours.
You're going to have to work a 40-hour week and that will obviously be paid at the normal rate.
But if you do choose to take on the extra hours, then you're going to get rewarded for it.
And that's the right thing to do. Let me give you some examples.
If you worked in the Heinz factory in Wigan and you chose to stay after work for another hour or hour and a half,
you know, do seven hours extra a week, you're going to take home a thousand pounds extra a year.
If you're a newly qualified nurse and you did an extra hour every day, five hours a week,
you're going to take home almost £1,300 at the end of the year.
This is real money for the hardest working people out there.
Yes, it does cost money. You know, it's going to cost about £5 billion.
We're going to find that through savings in welfare.
We've already announced £40 billion in savings.
No more welfare for migrants, no more welfare for people who are choosing not to be in work.
But I think this sends the very strongest signal that reform is for working people
and we're going to back people who are choosing to do the extra hours.
I don't suppose it's completely an accident that you mentioned Wigan as an example.
But let's not go into that because we have a by-election.
We have by-election rules.
But I still don't quite see how you are going to prevent employers from gaming the system
and reducing the tax burden on both them and their employees without massive intrusions into every company,
every hairdresser, every garage in the country.
Well, we've allocated £5 billion to this and that includes an apportionment for some reclassification
of unpaid overtime to paid overtime.
So we expect there will be some changes within the labour market.
But if there is gaming of this, if there's abuse, then obviously we'll clamp down on that
and we'll work with HMRC and the Treasury when we enter government to make sure that we get that right.
But the rules are very simple.
You have to have worked your normal contracted 40 hours and then you're choosing to take on some extra hours.
And, you know, for those extra hours, you're going to get this big tax cut.
I talked to Darren Jones, the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister's Office about your proposal this morning.
And he says, number one, people are going to cheat.
Number two, it's going to cost you £5 billion and that tells you what reform is going to do.
You're going to take it out of the National Health Service because you're going to introduce a social...
..an insurance system and basically destroy the NHS.
Well, it does tell you what reform is going to do, yeah, and who we reform in business for.
It's for working people. We're for the 90% of people who are going to benefit from this.
No, but you're going to get the £5 billion and it won't be going to the NHS that needs it, is his point.
It's going to working people.
We are not for benefit streets.
And that is, you're not saying we're not going to cut the NHS.
We're not going to cut the NHS, but I'm not accepting the premise of the nonsense that Darren Jones has been spouting on your show.
We're for working people. We're unashamedly giving a tax cut to the hardest working people out there.
What's Labour going to do?
They're going to increase taxes, as they have done throughout their time in government, and waste it on benefits.
We're not for the benefit street.
Neither are we for the luxury beliefs brigade that Labour and the Tory party are fighting over at the top end either.
We're for the 90% of people who are in the middle, are working hard, exactly the sort of people who take on overtime
because they want to do the right thing for themselves and their family.
Those people should know that if there's a reform government, they're our first priority and we're going to do everything we can to cut tax for them.