Article published in the Times & Star, Thursday 1st February 2024
Dear Sirs,
I didn’t intend to make a habit of writing, but I can't let another column of mistruths from a candidate go unchallenged. While neither the Lib Dem's, or today’s student union Labour party, are renowned for honest campaigning, If we allow it on these pages without comment we are doing our voters a disservice.
I've said it before and will continue to - honesty matters in politics. If people are ‘turned off voting’ as the Lib Dem candidate says, it is the dishonesty like we see in her column that is to blame.
The claim that ‘the tax burden for those employed is at its highest level in decades’ is demonstrably false. Except for cohorts in the top 5% you now take home more of your gross pay than you would have done in 2010, under the type of Labour government the Lib Dems are campaigning for.
Not only has National insurance been reduced to just 10%, the lowest rate for decades, but at £12,570 the NI threshold is also now 71% higher than where it would have been if it had just continued to rise at the level of inflation as it used to. Alongside that, the income tax threshold at the same level is 32% higher than where it also would have been – which means that the personal tax burden is the lowest it has been for decades. All while the National Minimum Wage has increased in real terms by 20% since 2010, and the median salary in the Workington constituency has increased by 16% since 2019 alone.
So it is absolutely true to say the ‘tax burden’ (tax as a % of GDP) is higher, but the burden has been shifted from personal to corporate taxes – and I think we should do more to bring down both.
This Conservative government supported people through the Covid pandemic, paid their wages while we were locked down, continues to protect all households from higher energy bills resulting from Putin’s war in Ukraine, and continues to support our most vulnerable families. While opposition parties wanted longer, harder lockdowns, and for us to buy more PPE at higher prices (oh, what short memories they have), this all comes at a cost – hundreds of billions of pounds – and it all has to be paid for.
If we want to fund our NHS, whose budget has increased by 38 % in real terms since 2010 and now accounts for 40% of public spending; If we want to fund our schools, and in Workington school budgets have increased by 10% in real terms since 2019 as I promised in My Plan; If we want to build more social housing, and there are 150,000 additional units compared to 2010 while the average number of units built annually by social housing developers over the last 13 years has been 50% higher than that of the previous 13 years – that all has to be paid for.
Good fiscal management has enabled us to bring down personal and corporate taxes over the last year while still delivering higher real terms budgets for our public services than in 2010 and delivering the investment that I promised my constituents in 2019, and I very much hope to see more of the same over the next 12 months. The best way to put money in people’s pockets, is to leave it there in the first place.
