HIGH earners should be taxed more to raise the amount people have to earn before paying income tax, according to a Worcestershire MP.

Worcester MP Robin Walker has called for the threshold to be raised to about £12,000 in a bid to boost the economy and help those on lower wages.

And the Conservative said one way to fund the cuts for millions of workers would be to tax the well-off more.

From this month, all workers across the country pay no tax at all on the first £9,440 they earn, up by £1,335. The coalition government’s policy will benefit 34,396 workers in Worcester, 34,360 in Malvern and 34,290 in Mid-Worcestershire, which includes Droitwich and Evesham. About 10,000 people in south Worcestershire have also been taken out of paying tax altogether following the move.

But Mr Walker wants the Government to go one step further in a bid to put more cash into people’s pockets. He said the current minimum wage for a full-time worker – which comes to about £12,000 a year for a wage of £6.19 an hour – is a good base to aim for.

“It’s great that we’ve reached the current threshold, but I’d like to see it raised so it reaches the current minimum wage levels,” he said.

“It would be an entirely logical thing to do and is a sensible step forward.

“The way in which it could be paid for is to keep on increasing the higher income threshold slightly below inflation, so we take the 40 per cent rate and increase it by around one per cent a year.

“I’m a strong supporter of what the Government has done, but the advantage of it is that people at the lower end of scale tend to spend more of their income. We could use this to really make work pay.”

When the Government came to office, the threshold stood at £6,475, but due to regular increases since 2010, 2.2 million of the lowest paid workers have since been taken out of the tax system altogether.

The Coalition has been attacked by Labour, though, for cutting the very top rate of income tax from 50p per pound to 45p for those with annual salaries above £150,000.

For those earning between £32,011 and £150,000 it stands at 40p for each pound.