Voodoonomics!

Fed up with yet another LibDem party political broadcast masquerading as Danny Alexander's regular "Our Man in Westminster" column in the Courier, I've sent in this letter to the editor. We'll see tomorrow if they print it!

Dear Sir

Having allowed Danny Alexander MP to use his “Our Man in Westminster” column in last Tuesday’s Courier (9 March) to put his case for Liberal Democrat tax policy, I hope you will give me the opportunity to respond through your letters column.

As always, the LibDems come up with ideas which sound great but fall apart when you look at the details. They are the ideas of a party which does not have to worry about the serious business of government and how it impacts on the lives of ordinary people.

Mr Alexander describes the LibDem’s “fair” tax proposals. The highlight of this is raising the income tax threshold to £10,000. Whilst this does indeed give back £700 a year to many people on low incomes, he makes no mention of Labour’s Working Tax Credits (WTC), which already does more than this for low income families. The LibDem’s have said they want to limit WTC because it helps families earning as much as £50,000. Shame that their new income tax threshold will benefit families earning up to £100,000!

The LibDems estimate that raising the income tax threshold to £10,000 will cost £16.5bn. They claim this can be paid for – at the same time as making “savage cuts” to public spending – through higher taxes on the well off. When you read their proposals in detail, however, it’s clear that this is made up of a ragbag mix of tax avoidance savings, new taxes on air travel and cutting various capital gains tax reliefs. Putting to one side the impact of the capital gains tax changes on our pension funds, this seems to depend an awful lot on closing the same tax loopholes which every government has struggled with. These feel like SNP promises in the making to me.

In the detail of LibDem policy, £400m is to be raised from a new “green” tax on UK domestic flights.

Now I am all for encouraging people to use trains and other forms of public transport but perhaps Mr Alexander would like to explain how this new tax will affect the price of flights from hard-pressed Inverness airport to the Islands, Edinburgh and the south-east?

Labour will continue to develop a tax regime which is fair to individuals and businesses and which uses tax credits and other reliefs to support those that really need it most.

In closing, I see that pillar of the Thatcher establishment, Norman Tebbit, has praised the LibDem tax proposals (www.libdemvoice.org on 13 Jan 2010). That says everything about which side of the political divide the LibDems now stand on, and who they may be likely to support in a hung parliament.

Yours etc.