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Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

They would be rather less enthusiastic about those proposals; indeed, they would think that they smacked of being additional stealth taxes. They would also note with concern that the Lyons report says that in today’s terms a local income tax would result in the basic tax rate going up by 7.7p in the pound. My last point about Sir Michael Lyons’s report is that he suggests the option of helping households that pay an unacceptably high council tax. Paragraph 174 of the executive summary proposes ““a circuit-breaker rebate”” to ensure that no householder pays more than a set proportion of income in property tax. I have long argued in favour of such a system. An enormous number of pensioners are, for want of a better expression, in council tax poverty. People are described as being in fuel poverty if they pay more than 10 per cent. of their income towards the cost of their fuel. However, many of my constituents pay much more than 10 per cent. of their net income towards the costs of council tax. They are, therefore, in council tax poverty. Limiting the percentage of income that was attributed to council tax would be a helpful mitigation. Of course, the Chancellor took up none of those suggestions in the Budget because he is more interested in filling his coffers and deceiving the people. If we were in any doubt about the Chancellor’s abuse of the English language, let us consider just two things that he said in the Budget speech. He said that"““the amount of cash that can be saved tax-free from £3,000””" will be raised"““by 20 per cent. in April next year to £3,600.””" In his last sentence, he stated that"““I will from next April cut the basic rate of income tax””.—[Official Report, 21 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 825-828.]" ““Next April”” is later this week. The Chancellor deliberately used language that must have given the impression that we were considering April this year rather than April next year. No wonder that the quality of education in our country is declining so rapidly when the Chancellor sets such a poor example from the top. ““Next”” means next, not the year after ““next”” or the April after next. If the Chancellor becomes Prime Minister, I hope that he will pay greater heed to the English language and, in so doing, to the need to increase public confidence in the straight talking of politicians.