Higher taxes for the rich, no increase in inheritance thresholds, a crackdown on offshore tax haven, increases duties on house prices over £1 million won’t affect the working people of this country, even if the Sun would like to pretend otherwise.
Stamp duty changes at the lower end of the scale are designed to help potential new home owners. Similarly, small increases in the budget staples of cigs, fuel and drink are not going to break the weekly budget of the average family, who will be assisted by a rise in child tax credits. Pensioners too will see an increase in winter fuel allowance. However supporting the Tobin tax in theory was a let down, as saying that it needs to be introduced internationally is a cop out. Hopefully the guarantee of a basic bank account for everyone, but particularly the one and a half million people who don’t have one, will be on the basis of a new model of banking (perhaps even one based on the Post Office?)
Darling emphasised that he was not advocating short sighted spending cuts, but as usual laid out £11 billion of “efficiencies”. Some of these are to be welcomed, believe it or not, such as a 50% reduction in spending on consultants across Whitehall. Indeed, in this one area, a 100% reduction would have been nice.(That plus a total cull of so-called parliamentary lobbyists representing big business).
However his “specific operational efficiencies” include a clampdown on civil service sickness to save £1.4 bn and £555m saved by tackling sickness and absence in the NHS. Best to remember the old trade union saying, that one man’s efficiency saving is another's public sector job loss. We shall see.
Meantime the Tory tabloids rejoiced in council tax rises of only 1.8%. One does wonder if in his forecast of 3% economic growth for the next year, Darling took into consideration that local economies throughout Britain will be reeling from job losses throughout local government, and the loss of vital services. Given that local economies depend on the spending of public sector workers, there must be a likely contraction in local economies, and associated private sector job losses.
Add to that the cost to the public purse of providing benefits for those made redundant and the thought occurs that perhaps someone in the Treasury is not seeing a bigger picture.