I've found the magic money tree! It was here all along!
There's £85bn being handed over to corporations in corporate welfare; incentives, tax breaks, grants and so forth. That's quite a lot of money, isn't it? That's more than the "bloody spongers" welfare bill, isn't it? Now, suppose we don't give them those breaks, what happens? Oh yeah, the conventional wisdom says that they'll leave the UK... "Screw you guys, I'm going home".
Seriously? Let's think about that a second. Large corporations, who don't pay taxes and get huge sums in corporate welfare are going to stop doing business in the UK? Amazon not delivering? Starbucks not making coffee? in the sixth largest consumer market in the world? Yeah, right, sure. They'll all be prepared to lose millions per year from lost business just to stick to a principle. Corporations are clearly well known for not being guided by the almighty bottom line, eh?
And if I'm wrong and they do? Well, we're not making any money from taxing them, and we'll save money by not giving them welfare. Off you go, I say. Bye, bye. I also don't think it'd be very long before other business, perhaps even home-grown UK ones, would step into a market breach suddenly left begging. People still want online junk ordering and crappy drive-through (sorry, "thru") coffee you know, no reason why a UK new starter couldn't fill that gap and create jobs (not off shored, even!) in the process.
lack of tax income from multinationals and corporate welfare handouts dwarf the costs given in Labours manifesto; it dwarfs the cost we currently pay in benefits to people who actually need it. Top it all off with a tax hike for the 1% wealthiest and/or a 1p increase in income tax and we could easily fund all of the suggested programs and more. We might even have a few bob left over for other projects, like, say, education and enterprise intiatives for SMEs.
So, stop pretending the money isn't there because its just being given to the wrong people and the wrong causes.
[Sauce] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/06/benefits-corporate-welfare-research-public-money-businesses