Cheadle and Gatley Lib Dems are moving
Graham, Tom and Ian
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What were the local issues four decades ago?
Cheadle and Gatley Lib Dems are moving
Cheadle and Gatley Lib Dems are moving
What were the local issues four decades ago?
Cheadle and Gatley Lib Dems are moving
The £12 billion Tory black hole – what are they going to cut?
by Lib Dem team on 30 April, 2015
The Tories have famously promised to cut £12 billion from the benefits bill but won’t give any clues as to where the money’s coming from.
Now the Lib Dems have revealed plans to slash child benefit and child tax credit the Tories proposed in 2012. They were blocked by the Lib Dems.
Mark Hunter and the Lib Dems blocked Tory plans to slash child benefit and child tax credit.
As the Guardian reports, the proposed cuts included:
- Limiting support to 2 children in child benefit and child tax credit, so cutting up to £3,500 from a family with three children.
- Removing the higher rate child benefit from the first child, an average cut of over £360 for every family with children.
- Means testing child benefit – cutting £1,750 for a two child middle income family
- Removing child benefit from 16 to 19 year olds – a cut of over £1,000 for parents of a single child.
The Tories have now said they aren’t going to make those cuts, which would be a little more believable if they were willing to give us any clue as to what they are going to cut.
The Tories have promised the country that they are going to make big cuts somewhere – we want to know where.
A vote for Mark Hunter is a vote for a fully-costed plan to boost NHS spending by £8 billion and increase spending in schools, saying exactly where the money is coming from. A vote for the Tories is a step into the dark – either they don’t know where the money will come from or they know but don’t want to tell us.
5 Comments
Why is everyone so concerned about this and not the possibility of a Labour Government with the SNP pulling some of the strings? Do you not think that the Conservative-Liberal coalition achieved many good things? Get into the real world and stop harping on about matters you know will need to be dealt with to maintain and grow our economy. Look at the calibre of those in Labour who may be in charge – yes frightening isnt it? Lots of us in the private sector have a long way to go to get back to to pre-recession earnings (for which Labour aren’t entirely blameless) whilst continuing to pay tax to keep the public services going whilst many in that sector have pensions I for one only dream of.
The Govt. (of whichever party) should deal with the deficit and debt first. Once these are cleared, with a stronger economy the good things will follow.
It’s a rare occasion when I agree with Mr Cohen but if he is condemning the demise of “final salary” pension schemes in the private sector, then I do so agree. It was pretty much direct action by Gordon Brown, as Chancellor, which undermined the stability of those schemes. Almost single handed, he is responsible for future generations of pensioner poverty.
Those of us, whether having worked in the public or private sector, who still have access to such schemes are indeed fortunate, having saved in our schemes over many years of employment. It’s meant we’ve been able to properly plan our finances in later life.
I’ll declare my interest, as a pensioner in the Local Government Pension Scheme. The amount of pension paid in a final salary scheme obviously relates to what your final salary is. The average drawn by members of that Scheme is approx. £4800 per annum. Others can form their view as to whether that’s generous or not – personally I think it is not, but that relates to the generally low level of pay in local government.
Not many economists read this column then. The economy was actually growing before the last election, since then it has stagnated and will continue to do so if the Tories get in and continue their austerity programme. By focusing on a more gradual reduction whilst increasing items like a living wage payable by all FTSE 250 companies,this would put more money into peoples pockets and at the same time, reduce the need to pay working tax credits (which are a tax break for multi billion pound companies). People would have more money to spend and hey! the economy would GROW! As to suitability, does anybody really believe that an Eton / Oxford / Bullingdon drinking Club CV give anyone ANY clue about the Real World?
Alan Gent – Whilst I agree that Tax Credits use tax payers money to subsidise low wages, I’m not 100% in agreement with a forced ‘living wage’.
Any increase in wages has to be paid for somehow, forcing companies to increase wages won’t actually create any new money. All that happens is they have to increase the costs of the goods and services they produce, which will then feed into inflation. And suddenly the ‘living wage isn’t enough (rinse and repeat).