MP Simon Hoare blasts the Chancellor’s Budget as a rural-punishing exercise in political survival – built on deception, not duty
Rachel Reeves excelled herself with this year’s Budget. Delivered – without a hint of irony – during the BBC’s scam awareness week, she unleashed her inner Artful Dodger and dipped into all of our pockets. The spirit of Christmas cheer was banished to the wings, and her characters of choice were pantomime baddy mixed with Scrooge at his most curmudgeonly.The Budget was not a good one. First, it was based on three lies: 1) the promise made at the election by Labour not to raise taxes on ‘ordinary people’; 2) that last year’s tax raid was a ‘one-off’ and subsequent years’ spending would be financed by growth and; 3) that there was an extra dimension to the Chancellor’s fictitious black hole (can one have an extra dimension to a fiction?) which required draconian action to create fiscal headroom.
All three were lies.
I do not use the word lie lightly. Indeed, in Parliamentary terms it is almost as bad as the C-bomb, for no Hon Member can ever lie.
But, we were lied to. Rishi Sunak pointed out clearly what a Labour Government would do. He was ignored – and the rest, as they say, is history. Labour’s ‘ordinary people’ – a phrase which I frankly find baffling – are now being taxed more. This is the second year’s tax rises … and there is no growth.
There was no extra doom dimension that needed plugging, as the Office of Budget Responsibility had made clear to the Chancellor before she gave her Nightmare Before Christmas press conference. A budget evolved in chaos was based on a bed of deceptions, half truths and sleights of hand. Ms Reeves is the dodgy croupier par excellence.
A punch between the eyes
It’s the ‘Why the Hell Should I Bother Budget?’. If you are saving via an ISA to try to do the right thing (and we are all trying to encourage savings) you are hit by a new tax requirement. Paying a bit extra into your pension to do the right thing for your old age? A punch between the eyes again, with changes to pension policy. Trying to create growth through setting up or expanding a business and taking on staff? Hit again with business rates, no changes to VAT for the hospitality sector and just making it harder to be an innovator, investor or entrepreneur.
Put simply the Budget flicked a very large V at those trying to work hard and do the right thing.
This was not a Budget for the country. It was a Budget to save (temporarily?) the jobs of 10 and 11 Downing Street. Even with Starmer’s eyewatering majority, he still has to pay blackmail cash to appease his backbenchers.
Gone is any attempt to reform welfare spending. Instead, a massive series of tax raids to remove the two-child benefit cap. The cap was a popular policy among all voting groups, because it injected fairness and responsibility into the choices of having children. All of that has gone because Labour MPs insisted upon it.
Every street, village, hamlet, town across our country will know of someone who milks the system. The person who opts out while the vast majority haul themselves out of bed to go to work, to earn some cash to pay the bills and support their family.
This Budget laughs, openly and without embarrassment, in their faces.
The Chancellor told us that she needed to increase taxes to pay for existing increases in welfare payments. And, what did she do? She ADDED to those payments. Unless there is growth – and that now seems way out of reach – next year’s budget will see more of the same: increases in taxes to pay for Labour’s increased spending, which it is having to do to keep the unions and their left-wing MPs quiet. Where is Starmer’s spine? Where is Reeves’ resolve?
Direct hit on rural lives
Changes to the Family Farm Tax still do not make this horrid tax any more acceptable. There are ways of taxing the Dysons of this world without punishing hardworking family farmers.
The tax needs scrapping. End of. Conservatives would do so.
The Chancellor’s proposed pay-per-mile is wrong. Why not simply create a new Road Tax band? Paying per mile is a direct hit on rural motorists. It is also bad environmentally – people will retain or replace their unleaded or diesel vehicles as they are likely to be cheaper to run. Reduced purchaser demand will also likely lead to a decline in the UK car industry and subsequently jeopardise foreign inward investment.
This was a Budget for Labour self-preservation. A Budget to save Sir Keir’s job, not yours. A Budget for the unions, not the people. A Budget conceived in chaos, delivered in mayhem and swaddled in a blanket of lies. It was not for the good people of North Dorset – and my post bag and inbox tells me so.
