Midlands burns with anger while Labour keeps fighting
Aug 28 2008 Agenda
There was more economic doom and gloom yesterday when Britain’s biggest house builder Taylor Wimpey said that first-half underlying profits dived 96 per cent to £4.3 million. George Osborne explains how a Conservative Government would heal many of the country’s economic woes.
When Gordon Brown and his Chancellor Alistair Darling tell the people of Birmingham and the West Midlands that the economy is strong, you have to ask yourself what planet they are living on.
Every day seems to bring more bad news as the cost of living soars, house prices fall and unemployment starts to rise. British Gas is increasing its gas prices by over 30 per cent, further adding to the pressure on people across the West Midlands.
And for families in the region looking to get away for a hard earned break, there is no respite from the rising cost of living: the pound has slumped against the Euro, meaning the cost of a week long family holiday in Europe has increased by over £300.
When inflation is rising fast, you want a government that’s on your side. Instead, Labour politicians are at each other’s throats.
Rather than taking action, they’re plotting amongst themselves, waging internal battles and scheming to oust Gordon Brown. So while people across the West Midlands are feeling the pinch, Labour are failing to help.
Ask yourself this simple question: name one thing Labour has done to make it easier for families coping with the squeeze on family budgets? Just one? No, I can’t think of anything, either.
The cause of Labour’s infighting and the state of the economy have the same root cause: Gordon Brown’s economic mismanagement.
It’s his mistakes that have hit Labour in the opinion polls, and it’s these same mistakes that are hitting the public in their pockets.
As we all know, Gordon Brown spent too much money in the good times, and didn’t put anything aside for a rainy day. After a decade of global economic growth, Britain is now left with the largest budget deficit in the developed world.
In fact, according to the Economist, the only countries with bigger budget deficits are Hungary, Egypt and Pakistan.
Gordon Brown failed to fix the roof when the sun was shining, and the consequence for millions of families up and down the country is that taxes are going up just when the family finances are getting tighter.
According to the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies, taxes have gone up by more than £7 billion since the last election alone.
These tax rises are making life more difficult for people in the West Midlands. Take the 20 per cent rise in the tax on millions of small businesses, or the 10p tax raid on those on lower incomes, for example.
Instead of helping people with the rising cost of living, Gordon Brown’s economic mismanagement means Labour is actually making it worse.
But Gordon Brown just doesn’t seem to understand. He’s refusing to listen to the British public, and stubbornly pressing ahead with his deeply unfair and unpopular plans to hit motorists with tax increases on family cars bought up to seven years ago.
Labour’s Vehicle Excise Duty plans mean over eight in 10 motorists who bought their cars since 2001 will have to pay higher taxes.
And while Gordon Brown might claim that this tax rise only hits gas guzzlers, the truth is that millions of ordinary family cars, including the Ford Focus, Ford Mondeo and Nissan Micra, will be hit with increased tax bills.
Greenpeace say this tax gives green taxes “a bad name”, which is not surprising when you see how the tax rise on a Ford Mondeo is four times as much as that on a Hummer! So this isn’t a green tax – it’s a stealth tax, and it’s adding yet more pressure to families’ budgets.
So it’s clear that the reason taxes are going up, just when people need help the most, is that Gordon Brown has mismanaged the public finances.
It’s also clear that with Labour too busy fighting themselves to fight for the public, people across the West Midlands are now looking to the Conservatives for answers.
In the past 12 months, David Cameron has frequently visited Birmingham to listen to people’s concerns about the economy, and to explain exactly what the Conservative Party would do to help.
I’ve also visited the region regularly, and in recent months I’ve visited a recruitment company in Edgbaston, spoke to small businesses at the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce at the turn of the year, and visited an award winning small engineering firm in Erdington.
Whenever we’re in the region, David Cameron and I set out the detailed economic recovery plan we’ve developed to help families across the West Midlands and get Britain’s economy back on trap. Let me explain three of the key elements of this plan.First, we would bring help to families. Instead of the broken system of fuel duty that sees tax bills rise even as the price of oil soars, we would introduce a Fail Fuel Stabiliser. This would mean that fuel tax would fall automatically as oil prices rise, so that drivers are cushioned from the blow of higher prices.
So government would share the pain, and to ensure stable public finances would in return share the gain when the oil price fell by raising the duty.
If a sensible system like this had been put in place at the time of this year’s Budget, petrol duty would now be 5p cheaper. We would also scrap next year’s huge hike in vehicle excise duty on family cars. To help young families now frozen out of the housing market, we would implement the plans we announced almost a year ago to take first-time buyers out of stamp duty. This would mean over nine out of ten first time buyers in the West Midlands would not have to pay stamp duty on their first home.
And Conservative councils are also taking action on council tax. We have all seen how, working with the Lib Dems, the Conservative led Birmingham council has kept its council tax increase to the lowest of any major city in the UK, while dramatically improving the Audit Commission star rating for their services.
Second, we would bring help for businesses. We have got to try to avoid businesses getting into trouble and starting to lay off people.
Unemployment is rising and we want to stop it rising further in the months ahead. So we Conservatives propose helping fundamentally good businesses struggling with the conditions of the credit crunch by giving them a temporary breathing space, ordered by the courts, that helps them restructure the company before the liquidators move in and jobs are lost. Businesses across the West Midlands would also benefit from our plans to simplify the whole business tax system, eliminating complex reliefs and cutting tax rates. We’ve set out how this would mean a reduction in the main rate of corporation tax from 28p to 25p, and the small companies rate from next year’s 22p rate to 20p.
Third, the next Conservative Government is drawing up the plans to put Britain on a long term path that enables us to compete against lower wage economies like China and India.
That means lower taxes as and when the country can afford it. It also means a simpler, fairer tax system – with no more stealth taxes.
And crucially, any long term recovery plan must make sure that a British Government never again gets into the mess Labour have got us into today.
As David Cameron put it in a recent speech in Birmingham, “After a decade of reckless spending under Labour, Britain needs good housekeeping from the Conservatives.” That is why we are setting out a whole new approach that guarantees that government lives within its means, and sets aside money in the good years to help families and businesses in the difficult years.
The Conservative Party is on the side of people across the West Midlands. While Labour politicians are fighting each other, we are fighting for a better deal for your region.
We will take immediate action to ease the pressure on families, and we have set out a detailed long term plan to get the economy and public finances back on track. The next Conservative Government will do something Gordon Brown never did. We will fix the roof when the sun is shining.
