Howard pledges end to 'corrosive' taxation
Tory Leader Michael Howard has repeated his commitment to lower taxes and promised new details of the Tories' plans to cut waste and spending to bring them about.
link: Howard ascends the Tory throne
In a major speech to Policy Exchange entitled ‘The British Dream’, he said: ‘Why do Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians think that spending taxpayers’ money is the solution to every problem?’
‘When taxes rise too high, they start to bring people low. There is a moral reason for government to take less from people in taxation. If people are highly taxed, they come to believe that their obligations to society and to one another are discharged just by handing money over to government.
‘Over a long period, that is corrosive. I want Britain to be a country where people, families and communities take more responsibility for one another.
‘Low taxes give people the opportunity to make their own decisions: decisions to save, to give, to spend, to keep more for their families and their children. People grow in confidence, and grow morally, when the state gives them the opportunity to do so.
‘So these are the reasons why I want to see lower taxes, less government bureaucracy, less waste, and a simpler, more transparent tax system.
‘I have asked David James, who had to be called in by the government to help salvage the fiasco of the Dome, to investigate how we can cut government waste across the board. We call it Yard 10 Economics, after the now infamous yard in the Dome where £80m worth of equipment lay in unopened boxes because it couldn’t be used.
‘Oliver Letwin recently outlined our commitment to a simpler tax structure through long-term methodical reform. Soon we will announce a significant measure, which will curtail the rise in government bureaucracy and waste. Next week Oliver will set out our medium-term approach to government spending.’