Intellectual debate is moving towards the Tories
Frank Field speaks his mind.
Proving as ever that he’s a mighty thorn in Gordon Brown’s side, Labour MP Frank Field had a few criticisms to make about the Pre Budget Report in his blog including the government’s failure to adequately compensate those who lost out in the 10p tax row.
The package therefore raised some fundamental questions about the Government’s competence in running a crisis economy. Its lack of action on the 10p raises the most fundamental questions about its moral purpose.
In Gordon Brown’s last budget the cut of 2p in the standard rate of tax was paid for largely by abolishing the 10p starting rate of tax. Millions of low paid taxpayers were made worse off.
The £2.7bn compensation package announced in May did not restore the relative position of the low paid. The tax concessions apply to all taxpayers including all those standard rate payers who had benefited by the 2p standard rate reduction.
Yesterday’s budget merely extended relief to all taxpayers. In no way did it restore the relative tax burden of low paid workers to the vast majority of workers paying at the standard rate.
The Government therefore faces the charge that it either doesn’t understand what it has done to the 10p group of taxpayers. Or that it doesn’t care. Either way it is a pretty bloody outlook.
He concludes with an anecdotal tale of Harriet Harman and her approach to the Women’s Institute to campaign against sex trade adverts, in comparison to Jacqui Smith’s strident legislative urges;
There are no prizes for guessing which will prove to be the more effective. But here is the sting in the tail. It is the civil society approach that David Cameron is trying to make his own as a means of rebuilding broken Britain.
“Another sign that the intellectual debate is moving towards the Tories” he says.
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