Taxes to rise, says top Tory adviser
A Conservative government would be under pressure to raise the general level of taxation to tackle Britain’s record deficit, one of its key advisers said yesterday.
Alan Budd, who would lead the Conservative’s fiscal policy watchdog, suggested the budget deficit, set to top 12 per cent of gross domestic product this year, could not be tackled by spending cuts alone.
“It’s going to be very difficult indeed to achieve the kinds of cut in deficit that will be needed without some increases in the general level of taxation like that,” Budd told a Channel 4 television programme broadcast last night
“It just doesn’t seem to me possible to do it all on the public spending side,” he said