Mike Hancock News
"Budget is a muddle that will do little for Portsmouth or the country"
“Woolworths may unfortunately have gone but pick’n’mix is still alive with the current Chancellor.”
That is the verdict on today’s budget by Portsmouth South, MP, Mike Hancock who is also in charge of Regeneration and Economic Development on Portsmouth City Council. He branded it as “a hodgepodge of recycled measures that didn’t add up to a coherent whole.”
A survey by the MP of small businesses in the city found that 82% of them wanted the Chancellor to cut income tax for ordinary people – giving them money to spend with local businesses. Mike Hancock and the Liberal Democrats have argued for the personal allowance, the amount of income someone needs to earn before they start paying income tax, to be raised to £10,000 a year. This would take 4 million people out of paying tax all together and would cut the majority of people's income tax by £700 and would be paid for by clamping down on loopholes and tax avoidance by large firms and the very wealthy. Research by the Trade Union Congress (TUC) showed that large firms and the very wealthy were avoiding paying £26 billion a year in tax. Other countries have introduced a General Anti-Tax Avoidance Provision to help stamp this out.
Mike Hancock said: “It is clear that the Government and the country are in a very big hole. And this budget does little to help us dig ourselves out. Even if the economy starts to grow again, it is clear that there will be lasting effects for many years to come. Over a third of small businesses in the city in my survey said that they had either laid people off or were planning to do so. I fear that we will see a spiral of increasing unemployment both locally and nationally. Giving people an income tax cut would have helped restore consumer confidence and started people spending again which would help reverse the downward spiral.”
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