Conservative proposals offer immediate and practical help.

Peter Aldous highlights Conservative proposals offering immediate and practical measures to help families and businesses through the recession.

In Bob Blizzard’s Letter from Westminster, he states that this recession is worse as it is global. This is largely correct, though unfortunately Britain is in a bad position to weather the gathering economic storm due to the policies that Labour have pursued for the past 12 years. Government and personal debt have been allowed to rise to unsustainable levels.

Labour’s scattergun proposals for dealing with the recession are not working. Their strategy for addressing the UK’s debt crisis is to increase debt even further. The bank recapitalisation scheme hasn’t got credit flowing again to businesses and families. The £12 billion spent on a VAT cut, when shops were already slashing prices, hasn’t got people spending again and is a future tax increase “in waiting.”

The Conservative proposals involve a series of immediate and practical measures to help families and businesses through the recession. A Conservative Government will:

• Abolish income tax on savings for basic rate taxpayers.
• Raise pensioners’ personal allowance by £2,000 to £11,490.
• Get credit flowing and save jobs with a £50 billion National Loan Guarantee Scheme. The Government are now putting in place a watered down and complex version of this policy, 2 months after David Cameron first called for it.
• Help small businesses with cashflow by delaying VAT bills for 6 months.
• Reduce employment costs for small businesses by cutting National Insurance.
• Get companies hiring again through a tax break for new jobs.
• Freeze Council Tax for 2 years by cutting wasteful government spending.

In the longer term measures should be put in place, so that no Labour Government can ever bankrupt this country again.

Peter Aldous
Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Waveney
Wissett, Halesworth, Suffolk, IP19 0RA.