20 January 2005
Howard: Conservatives will cut your taxes and give you value for money
Speech in Wimbledon
"This week we sent a clear message to the millions of people who feel that they are paying too much in tax and getting too little in return. Conservatives will cut your taxes and give you value for money.
We offer a different approach - a new direction. Why? Because we believe our country is heading in the wrong direction. If we are to make the most of Britain's potential, we have to change track.
Britain needs a government with the right values - a government that trusts free enterprise; promotes individual responsibility; rewards hard work; encourages ambition; admires excellence. These are the right values. They are Conservative values. And they are the values of the forgotten majority - the backbone of our country.
The forgotten majority work hard. They save to buy their first home. They put money aside for their retirement. They take responsibility for their families. They deserve to be rewarded. But their only reward for the last seven and a half years has been higher taxes.
Since Mr Blair took over taxes have gone up 66 times. Hard working families have been clobbered to the tune of £5,000. Just look at what has happened in London. Average council tax bills up by almost £500. Stamp duty on the average stamp London home up by more than £8,000. And inheritance tax on the average London home - up from zero to almost £20,000. No wonder Londoners feel Mr Blair has forgotten them. That he takes them for granted. And that, after seven and a half years in government, he really has lost touch with how they live their lives.
People are working harder and harder simply to stand still. They are careful with their money. They struggle to live within their means.
But the same rules do not apply seem to apply to Mr Blair's government. His government spends at will. It wastes people's money. It lives beyond its means.
Rarely in the history of politics has a government spent so much and achieved so little. You know something is going badly wrong when the number of tax collectors is growing twice as fast as the number of new doctors and nurses.
Mr Blair talks about prosperity. But by allowing spending to get out of control he is storing up huge economic problems for the future. Government, like ordinary families, has to live within its means. But unlike families, when government loses that discipline, the costs of its failure are inflicted on the whole of society.
Britain is already the slowest growing of the English-speaking economies. Since 1997, the British economy has grown more slowly than Ireland, Canada, America, Australia and New Zealand. Ireland's income per head is now higher than Britain's.
All these economies have lower spending and lower taxes than Britain. Their reward for controlling spending and cutting taxes is faster growth. Higher growth means higher living standards. It means government can spend more on people's priorities.
To secure Britain's future economic prosperity, government must once again start to live within its means. Mr Blair is playing fast and loose with Britain's future. There's danger ahead. Mr Blair is spending and borrowing so much that most independent economic analysts agree that taxes would have to go up again if he gets another four more years.
Britain needs a responsible government - a government that will put an immediate stop to Mr Blair's next round of stealth taxes and cut taxes. By cutting government down to size, the next Conservative Government will ensure that the forgotten majority keeps more of the money it works so hard to earn.
Most people spend more money on taxes than they spend on food, clothing or their homes. In too many families, one parent is working to put food on the table, while the other is working to pay for government. It is not fair. It's bad for the British economy. It has to stop. And under a Conservative Government it will.
Low tax economies are the most successful economies. But when people pay less tax you also have a more cohesive society because we do more not just for ourselves, but for our communities.
My message to the forgotten majority is clear. There is a clear choice at the next election: more waste and higher taxes under Labour OR value for money and lower taxes with the Conservatives.
This week has shown that the Labour spin machine is terrified of that simple truth. It's pulled out every stop to distract people from that choice. For Mr Blair, the election is one more roll of the dice as he tries to bluff his way through to four more years.
Before the 1997 election, Mr Blair said he "had no plans to increase tax at all". What happened? He raised taxes by £8 billion.
Before the 2001 election, Tony Blair was asked whether any reasonable person should suppose that he was planning to put up National Insurance. "They shouldn't", he said. What happened? He raised National Insurance in Labour's biggest tax raising budget to date.
There's a clear pattern here. Say whatever's necessary to get elected. And once the votes are in the ballot box, raise taxes. Labour have raised taxes in all bar one of their seven budgets. And guess which one wasn't the tax raising budget - the one before the 2001 election.
Yesterday in the House of Commons, I challenged the Prime Minister to come clean and tell people which taxes he would raise to fill Labour's £8 billion spending gap.
As usual Mr Blair refused to come clean. So let's look at some of his options.
Capital gains tax on your main home. That would mean £90,000 on the average London house. VAT on food - adding £400 to the average Londoner's supermarket bill. Two pence on the basic rate of income tax. Or National Insurance Contributions on salaries over £33,000 up 10 per cent.
Instead of telling people what he'd do, what we all saw was the practiced patter of a politician adept at evading the truth. A politician for whom the most important question before the election is: "Can I pull it off just one more time?"
Well I've news for Mr Blair. It's going to be different this time. People don't like being taken for a ride. They've learnt that what matters is not what you say to win an election, but what you actually do afterwards. They have learnt that you - Mr Blair - are all talk and all tax.
It takes hard work putting the country on the right path. That's why we've done what no other political party has done before. We rolled up our sleeves. We worked with an experienced team of experts. We looked at what the country can afford and how we can meet the country's priorities by getting more money to frontline services, getting better value for money for the taxpayer.
This has involved making tough decisions:
• 168 public bodies will disappear;
• 235,000 bureaucratic posts will go;
• The Regional Assemblies will go;
• The new Supreme Court will be scrapped;
• There will be no Small Business Service; and
• There will be no New Deal.
This spending is wasteful and unnecessary. It is not delivering value for taxpayers' money.
We are determined to stop the tax rises Labour need to fill their black hole and put Britain on the path to lower taxes. It's about taking a disciplined approach to the problems Britain faces and making some hard choices.
Britain needs a government with the right values - one that understands the importance of promoting individual responsibility and rewarding hard work. A government that believes people are better at spending their hard earned cash than it is. And a government that understands that the most effective way of stopping wasteful spending is for the people who earned the money in the first place, to keep it.
If politicians don't get their hands on your cash, they can't waste it.
We've got just one hundred and eight days to go until the general election. One hundred and eight days before we can all tell Tony Blair what we really think of him. One hundred and eight days before we can give Britain the government our country deserves.
Everything a Conservative does will have one objective. And that objective is opportunity. Like many of you here today, I came from an ordinary family. I didn't have any special privileges. But Britain gave me the opportunity to get on life.
I want everyone - whatever their background, whatever the colour of their skin, whatever their religion - to have the opportunity to succeed. The opportunity to fulfil their ambitions. The opportunity to lead a better life than their parents.
In America, people talk about the American Dream. They talk about the ability of someone born in a log cabin to make it all the way to the White House. As it happens, in the States this is the exception not the rule. In Britain it does actually happen. There are countless example of people from humble beginnings who make it to the very top.
My hope for Britain is ambitious but simple - to give everyone the opportunity to live the British dream. That's why we need a government that values discipline at school and excellence in education. A government that let's people keep more of the money they earn by cutting taxes. And a government that brings back powers from Brussels so that it can always put the interests of the British people first.
That's what a Conservative Government will deliver. That's why Britain needs a Conservative Government. That's why it's our duty - each and every one of us - to pull out all the stops for a Conservative victory."
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Rt
Hon
Michael Howard QC MP |
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