DEBATE: With Alistair Darling standing down from the House of Lords, is it time to consider term limits for peers? With Alistair Darling standing down from the House of Lords, is it time to consider term limits for peers? John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, says YES. The House of Lords needs to be reformed. It is too big, too opaque, and too expensive. With Alistair Darling deciding to stand down from the [...]
The chancellor should deliver tax cuts, not more spending Chancellor Sajid Javid should stop turning on the spending taps Sajid Javid used his major conference speech yesterday to announce a raft of new spending pledges. The chancellor’s focus was infrastructure and rural areas, with money promised for bus networks, roads, and the rollout of 5G. This sits alongside the strapline of this year’s Conservative party conference itself, which focuses on spending more on the [...]
Forget glitzy vanity projects like HS2, here’s what we could do instead Until recently, Crossrail was cited as an example of that miraculous phenomenon: a government infrastructure project running on time and on budget. We now know that Crossrail has run off track; it is £3bn over its 2010 budget, and will open more than two years late. The much maligned HS2 project came with none of [...]
The NHS needs reform and automation, not a politically motivated bidding war June 19, 2018 It was the worst kept secret in Westminster, but we finally heard over the weekend that the NHS will receive a funding boost of around £20bn a year. As with public sector pay increases, the Conservatives perhaps feel that they have to loosen the purse strings a little, given the scare they got at the [...]
Philip Hammond’s self-employment tax hike marred a refreshingly mundane Budget March 9, 2017 It took just a couple of hours for the chancellor’s Budget to come under heavy fire. He set out changes to Class Four National Insurance contributions, increasing them from 9 per cent to 11 per cent over a couple of years. This breaks a Conservative manifesto pledge ruling out VAT, income tax and NI increases, his [...]
We won’t build a Global Britain with the highest taxes on air travel in the world February 20, 2017 The Prime Minister – in her Lancaster House speech last month – set out her vision for Brexit and her goal of “a truly global Britain”. She has been clear that she seeks to lead “a country that reaches beyond the borders of Europe” and “a country that goes into the world to build relationships”. [...]
Older people must shoulder their share of government spending cuts February 14, 2017 Given general improvements in technology and prosperity, younger generations should, in theory, always be better off than their parents. But with pensioner households now earning more than their working age equivalents, according to a new report from the Resolution Foundation, this can no longer be taken for granted. It is of course good news that older [...]
Punish HMRC for arbitrarily bullying the victims of our complex tax code February 8, 2017 A good rule of thumb for a system or process: if you sat down and designed it from scratch, would it look like it does now? Ask that question of the tax system and the answer, of course, is a resounding “no”. It is a hideously complicated mess that punishes families and businesses, while destroying [...]
From public sector pensions to social care, the government is scarily ill-prepared for major demographic change December 13, 2016 The gap between private and public sector pensions in the UK is the worst in the developed world, according to the OECD. New civil servants can expect to receive a 6 per cent pay rise when they reach retirement, while private sector workers can expect a cut of nearly 50 per cent. Mounting pressures on social [...]
Theresa May’s statism is the wrong way to build a more prosperous post-Brexit Britain October 12, 2016 Labour has lurched to the hard left and Ukip does not currently seem equipped to capture the significant number of voters on lower incomes who are worried about immigration and the impact of globalisation. So it is understandable that the Prime Minister is seeking to seize the coveted centre ground. For that purpose, Mrs May’s [...]
