on
People sometimes say all political parties are the same. Today the contrast between the Conservatives and Labour could not be more clear. One party is reforming welfare and limiting entitlements, the other wants to turn the welfare taps back on. We want brilliant new schools set up in the state sector, Labour has set its face against them because its friends in the unions don't like it. Conservatives celebrate the workers and entrepreneurs who create jobs - Labour demonises them and would make life more difficult for British businesses.
And nowhere is the contrast more stark than on taxation. Labour wants to put up taxes on people's homes, jobs, pensions - even their deaths. Conservatives are committed to cutting your taxes.
We know the economic case for cutting taxes: in a competitive world we cannot afford to carry on as a bloated, high-taxing, welfare-heavy nation. We have to direct our resources to incentivising work through tax cuts and not incentivising welfare through extra benefit entitlements. We have to fight the notion that you can endlessly suck more taxes out of businesses and bite the hand that feeds.
Conservatives understand the progressive case for tax cuts too. Historically there have been all sorts of mechanisms that governments have developed to help people to enjoy a higher standard of living, from fixed prices to complicated benefit schemes.
For me, the simplest way to help with living standards is this: allow people to take home more of their own money. Put another way, which makes more sense: tax people's incomes heavily and then give them back some of that money in a complicated package of overlapping tax credits or benefits - often creating perverse incentives, meaning that even if people work more, they earn less? Or simply tax them less in the first place?
But quite apart from the economic and progressive cases for cutting taxes, there's the moral case. It is morally right that the rich pay their fair share in tax; and right that those who are able to contribute to our public services and safety nets do so.
But what is morally wrong is government spending money as if it grows on trees. Every single pound of public money started as private earning. Every million in the Treasury represents a huge amount of hard work: early morning alarms, long commutes, hours spent on the factory floor, the office, the hospital ward or the classroom.
Conservatives understand this basic point. Labour doesn't. Ed Miliband once memorably described tax cuts as akin to government “writing people cheques”; in his world, public money is for the minister to bestow magnanimously on the people. And when you start with that attitude, you end up with appalling government profligacy; billions wasted; a growing public leviathan that demands ever higher taxes from working people.
No one should doubt my position: with every spending commitment we must be mindful of who picks up the bill. It's easy for governments to trumpet what they spend money on - and claim a moral victory for it - but on the other side of the coin are those who work hard, many on low incomes, who would desperately like to spend more money on their family. The government has a moral duty to think of these people in any decisions made on tax and spending.
It's for all these reasons that over four and a half years, while reducing the deficit, we have also cut income taxes. We have taken three million people out of income tax altogether and cut the taxes of 26 million.
In the next parliament, we will go further. We have made two clear commitments. First, we will raise the tax threshold again, so that nobody earning less than £12,500 will pay income tax. This represents the most progressive, poverty-attacking tax change in the postwar era: it will mean one million more low-paid workers will not have to pay income tax at all; and it means most basic-rate taxpayers will pay £3,800 less in tax over the next parliament compared with the Labour plans we inherited.
Second, no one earning less than £50,000 will pay the 40p rate of tax. This is about recognising the millions of people who have worked so hard to lift Britain out of recession, bearing a large burden of tax with quiet stoicism. Conservatives don't just talk about being on your side, we demonstrate it - and collectively these commitments will benefit 30 million taxpayers across our country.
Financing these tax cuts while continuing to cut the deficit will be hard, but doable. In this parliament we will have made £100 billion of savings while cutting income tax by £10.5 billion. In the next parliament we plan to make £25 billion of savings while making £7.2 billion in income tax cuts.
And of this I am in no doubt: Labour could not deliver any of this. Forget, for a moment, its complete lack of economic credibility; put aside the fact that it only ever proposes tax rises - on your home, on your business, on your pension. Just think of its beliefs. This is a party ideologically addicted to spending and borrowing and taxing.
And this, for me, goes to the heart of the choice for May 2015. On one side, a Labour party offering more spending, more borrowing, more debt, more taxes to be squeezed out of every working person in our country. On the other side, the Conservatives offering a long-term plan that is working; tax cuts that are credible; a future that is more secure for you and your family. The choice could not be more stark.
And nowhere is the contrast more stark than on taxation. Labour wants to put up taxes on people's homes, jobs, pensions - even their deaths. Conservatives are committed to cutting your taxes.
We know the economic case for cutting taxes: in a competitive world we cannot afford to carry on as a bloated, high-taxing, welfare-heavy nation. We have to direct our resources to incentivising work through tax cuts and not incentivising welfare through extra benefit entitlements. We have to fight the notion that you can endlessly suck more taxes out of businesses and bite the hand that feeds.
Conservatives understand the progressive case for tax cuts too. Historically there have been all sorts of mechanisms that governments have developed to help people to enjoy a higher standard of living, from fixed prices to complicated benefit schemes.
For me, the simplest way to help with living standards is this: allow people to take home more of their own money. Put another way, which makes more sense: tax people's incomes heavily and then give them back some of that money in a complicated package of overlapping tax credits or benefits - often creating perverse incentives, meaning that even if people work more, they earn less? Or simply tax them less in the first place?
But quite apart from the economic and progressive cases for cutting taxes, there's the moral case. It is morally right that the rich pay their fair share in tax; and right that those who are able to contribute to our public services and safety nets do so.
But what is morally wrong is government spending money as if it grows on trees. Every single pound of public money started as private earning. Every million in the Treasury represents a huge amount of hard work: early morning alarms, long commutes, hours spent on the factory floor, the office, the hospital ward or the classroom.
Conservatives understand this basic point. Labour doesn't. Ed Miliband once memorably described tax cuts as akin to government “writing people cheques”; in his world, public money is for the minister to bestow magnanimously on the people. And when you start with that attitude, you end up with appalling government profligacy; billions wasted; a growing public leviathan that demands ever higher taxes from working people.
No one should doubt my position: with every spending commitment we must be mindful of who picks up the bill. It's easy for governments to trumpet what they spend money on - and claim a moral victory for it - but on the other side of the coin are those who work hard, many on low incomes, who would desperately like to spend more money on their family. The government has a moral duty to think of these people in any decisions made on tax and spending.
It's for all these reasons that over four and a half years, while reducing the deficit, we have also cut income taxes. We have taken three million people out of income tax altogether and cut the taxes of 26 million.
In the next parliament, we will go further. We have made two clear commitments. First, we will raise the tax threshold again, so that nobody earning less than £12,500 will pay income tax. This represents the most progressive, poverty-attacking tax change in the postwar era: it will mean one million more low-paid workers will not have to pay income tax at all; and it means most basic-rate taxpayers will pay £3,800 less in tax over the next parliament compared with the Labour plans we inherited.
Second, no one earning less than £50,000 will pay the 40p rate of tax. This is about recognising the millions of people who have worked so hard to lift Britain out of recession, bearing a large burden of tax with quiet stoicism. Conservatives don't just talk about being on your side, we demonstrate it - and collectively these commitments will benefit 30 million taxpayers across our country.
Financing these tax cuts while continuing to cut the deficit will be hard, but doable. In this parliament we will have made £100 billion of savings while cutting income tax by £10.5 billion. In the next parliament we plan to make £25 billion of savings while making £7.2 billion in income tax cuts.
And of this I am in no doubt: Labour could not deliver any of this. Forget, for a moment, its complete lack of economic credibility; put aside the fact that it only ever proposes tax rises - on your home, on your business, on your pension. Just think of its beliefs. This is a party ideologically addicted to spending and borrowing and taxing.
And this, for me, goes to the heart of the choice for May 2015. On one side, a Labour party offering more spending, more borrowing, more debt, more taxes to be squeezed out of every working person in our country. On the other side, the Conservatives offering a long-term plan that is working; tax cuts that are credible; a future that is more secure for you and your family. The choice could not be more stark.
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