News
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Labour's tax and debt bombshells are taking Britain to the brink of bankruptcy. Their answer to the debt crisis is yet more borrowing. It's clear that the longer Labour are in power, the worse the economic situation will become.
By creating an environment in which overspending is encouraged and saving is penalized Labour's bail out policies are damaging the long term health of Britain. Savers are being penalized, paying for the mistakes of reckless borrowers (of which the Labour government itself is by far the worst offender). Saving used to be a virtue, now it is reviled. Hardly laying the foundations for a recovery!
The real challenge in this credit crunch is to get credit flowing again. That is why we have proposed a £50 billion National Loan Guarantee Scheme to get lending going and protect jobs.
Conservative help for savers and pensioners
Savers have suffered from the necessary reductions in interest rates. And pensioners have suffered from a decade of Gordon Brown's tax raids. So we are announcing today that the Government should, in its next Budget:
- abolish income tax on savings for basic rate taxpayers;
- raise the pensioners' personal allowance by £2,000 to £11,490.
We will pay for this by reducing the growth of Government spending in 2009 in Departments other than Health, Schools, Defence, and International Development to 1 per cent in real terms. This will save £5 billion - the same amount Labour think they can save in 2010/11 without affecting front-line services. We will introduce radical reform to Whitehall to improve financial accountability and entrench value for money.
Five Conservative measures to help victims of Gordon Brown's recession
We will:
- Get credit flowing and save jobs with a £50bn National Loan Guarantee Scheme.
- Freeze council tax for two years by cutting wasteful Government spending.
- Reduce employment costs for small businesses by cutting National Insurance.
- Get companies hiring again through a tax break for new jobs.
- Help small businesses with cashflow by delaying VAT bills for six months.
And over the long term we will get the public finances back under control with an Office for Budget Responsibility so no Labour Government can ever bankrupt this country again.
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