 |
|
This afternoon the Chancellor announced another tax-raising budget. The targets for his fist this year have been low earners and small business; one group in no position to pay more tax, the other the economic heart of the nation. No mention of cutting the waste in public services, such as the £500m alone spent on management consultancy fees for the NHS. No mention of the PFI contracts that essentially are mortgages on my generation’s future. And furthermore, he announced more government borrowing to pay for all of his continued largesse.
The detailed assessment of the budget, I am told, will come over the next few days. Why does a budget have to be so complicated? Why do low-income families have to pay more tax up front and then go through the laborious procedure of reclaiming it via a tax credits system? Would it not be better to remove these people entirely from the income tax system in the first place? Or, would that result in the state having to employ less people to administer the tax system? This Chancellor appears to love complexity, particularly when it creates more public-sector jobs.
A reduction in Corporation tax is welcome. An increase in defence spending, though undeniably rather late in the day, is also to be congratulated. But that is about it on the positive side. To have headlined with a reduction in the basic income tax rate and then proceed to claw the money back by removing the 10% rate is a cynical ploy. Furthermore, to increase tax on small business is quite simply stupid. Small business plays a major part in the British economy, both in terms of revenue generation and job creation. To hamper small business success is to hamper British economic success. And finally, he made no mention of the dramatic increases in council taxation rates over the last ten years. The total tax take in this country is now at an historic high.
Yet again, we have been privy to a political sleight of hand. The Chancellor is an unreformed, centralising Old Labour politician. Today’s budget is a ‘con’. It is more about pleasing his back benches (particularly those members in the South of England with wafer-thin majorities) than about improving this country’s economic position. If Comrade Gordon can deliver such a misleading representation of his economic performance as Chancellor, what sort of Prime Minister will he make?
