Helping the poor?

Dave Cam the Con-man has got himself into a right old Eton Mess over his tax claims. Well, it does get them headlines in the Mail and the Telegraph where Tory cheerleaders don’t usually look at the small print.

The biggest con is Dave Cam’s claim raising the basic tax allowance from £10,500 a year to £12,500 is to help the lowest paid the most. No it won’t.

Even those earning ÂŁ12,500 a year, the top end of the allowance will gain, at most, ÂŁ400 a year. Those earning ÂŁ50,000 a year will gain around ÂŁ2,000 a year in cold cash because the upper rate tax allowance is also being raised.

How does that work?

Nearly one in five workers do not earn enough to pay income tax, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies. Raising the earnings point at which the working poor pay tax will have little impact, unless it comes with some serious pay rises.

Pay rises for the poorer paid is not on the ‘Tory Toffs’ agenda.

The poorest group of workers get miserable pay topped up by benefits. The IFS says 40 per cent of those paying tax and getting benefits such as universal benefits will see little difference.

The reason? What is gained by a higher tax threshold is lost in reduced benefits. And to make matters worse those benefits are being frozen for at least two years.

The biggest cash gainers will be those earning over ÂŁ50,000 a year. The top 10 per cent of earners.

Double helpings

The top earners get double helpings. They gain from the ÂŁ2,000 rise in the basic tax allowance which applies to all taxpayers.

But they will also get the full gain from the massive promised rise in the upper tax rate from ÂŁ41,900 to ÂŁ50,000. Those earning between those figures make some gains, but not as much as those earning above ÂŁ50,000.

Only 15 per cent of workers earn enough to pay the upper rate of tax at present.

The back of the fag packet where the Tories work out their policies is now full. These policies and the claims made for them fall apart when the surface is scratched.

The most important thing on Dave’s horizon is the 2015 general election. And the Tories want to win at any cost to you or public services.

They will prioritise the NHS. That means 30 per cent cuts to other government departments according to the IFS.

Seven day a week GP surgery opening times? Older GPs are running for the exit and this year has seen the lowest number of GPs being recruited for seven years.

Balancing the books? Gone for now.

Dealing with austerity caused by the bank crash? Ditch that, there’s more tax cuts on the way for the higher paid, including lots of those bankers.

Dealing with the deficit that ballooned in the aftermath of the bank-made crisis? Don’t be daft, cut the tax rate for those earning more than £150,000.

Strapped for cash for public services? Cut corporation tax for the biggest companies.

We’re all in it together? Some are more in it than others.

We’re still on track for average earners to see the biggest decline in their spending power since Gladstone. That’s real Victorian values for you.

We’re still on track for this to be the first Parliament since the 1920s when real earnings were lower at the end, than at the start.

In fact Len McCluskey, Unite general secretary recently described the Tories as “the party that has done more to make working people impoverished and insecure than any government since Margaret Thatcher.

And as Tory cheerleader Frazer Nelson admitted in his Daily Telegraph column on October 3, “the real crunch is yet to come”. That means a public service wasteland.

IFS predicts that under current spending promises many government departments slashing public services by another third. There is now the further tax giveaway of £7bn which the Tories can’t say where the money will be found.

Grants Shaps, Tory party chairman, was asked repeatedly on the BBC Daily Politics programme about where that money was coming from. He did not have an answer.

Look for some creative accounting in Osborne’s upcoming Autumn Statement. There’s no doubt horrendous public service cuts are on the way if the Tories are back in government from 2015.

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey has set out his warning in very stark terms. “The truth is that David Cameron is promising not just more of the same but a whole new round of faster, deeper cuts, finishing the job of destroying our public services.

“The millions of working poor in this country will not be helped but hounded, pilloried by ministers who have never faced the choice between eating and heating. Our young people will be left without hope or expectations of a job, a living wage or even a roof over their heads.

“However the Tories sugar-coat it today, a vote for that party means five more years of economic ruination and dishonourable attacks on ordinary, decent people.     “Yes, our nations absolutely have a stark choice. It is between a government for the people and a government for the privileged.

“Next May, Cameron and his cronies should be shown the door.”