Week
in, week out, I meet and talk to a large number of my constituents.
Although
their economic circumstances may be different – many are struggling, others are
doing well – overwhelmingly they tell me that, as we make our way through the
national and global economic recession, they do want to see some fairness in
paying for the problems and in addressing the recovery.
Back
in 2010, George Osborne told us “We are all in this together. I am not going
to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.” It’s a message which he
and David Cameron and Nick Clegg have kept repeating.
It’s
certainly a message which the vast majority of my constituents wanted to hear
and for it to be acted on. Unfortunately, right now, they tell me that they do
not believe that they’re getting a fair deal from this government. It’s
important to examine why.
Since
2010 there have been 24 tax rises; this does not include the cuts to tax
credits which have hit millions of working families. The result is that
households will be about £1000 a year worse off by May 2015 than they were in
May 2010. In addition, as wages have not kept pace with inflation, on average,
they will be another £600 a year poorer.
However,
David Cameron and Nick Clegg have chosen to cut the 50p top rate of tax to 45p.
Just 1 in 100 households will be significantly better off because they are
enjoying a £3bn tax cut. It has meant that someone earning £1 million has
received a tax cut of over £42,000 a year and millionaires as a whole got an
average annual tax cut of £100,000.
What
my constituents are telling me is that ‘When the deficit is still high, when
tough times are now set to last well into the next decade, when for ordinary
families their real incomes are falling and taxes have risen, it surely cannot
be right to have chosen to give the richest people in the country a huge tax
cut.’
I
agree.
