Posts Tagged ‘Labour’
Labour United with Tories on Plans for Scotland to be used as “Guinea Pig”
Labour United with the Tories last night to accuse the Liberal Democrats of planning to use Scotland “as a guinea pig” for an unenforceable and “ridiculous” Immigration Policy.
Their joint attack on the idea that immigrants would only be allowed into the UK if they promise to work in regions where there is a need for them, followed a promise from LibDem home Affairs spokesman Tom Brake to “Seek to Trial this in Scotland”.
Glasgow South West Labour Candidate Ian Davidson said the proposals would end up with different immigration schems north and south of the border.
And Scottish Tory Campaign Manager said: “The Liberal Democrats want to use Scotland as a guinea pig for their irresponsible policies without giving thought for the pressure this will put on our public services. Perhaps “Nick Clegg would care to tell us how many thousands he would direct to Scotland and on what basis we have been singled out from the rest of the UK for this treatment”.
Taken from Press and Journal
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Conservatives – Three strikes policy to crack down on benefit fraud
Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Theresa May has announced a new ‘three strikes’ policy to crack down on those who repeatedly defraud the benefits system.
This comes as new analysis reveals that under Labour benefit overpayments due to fraud and error have cost £80 a second since 1997.
“For too long Labour have let benefit cheats play the system, costing the taxpayer millions”, May said.
“It is astounding that since 1997 welfare waste has cost the public £80 every second”.
- In total, Labour have wasted over £30 billion on fraud and error between 1997-98 and 2008-09. £14 billion of that has been wasted on benefit fraud.
- The Department for Work and Pensions has had its accounts qualified for the last 20 years due to the high level of fraud and error in the benefits system
- Between 2004-05 and 2008-09, only 143,838 people have been sanctioned for benefit fraud
The Conservatives have announced new plans to introduce tougher benefit sanctions for those found guilty of benefit fraud. This is about targeting the minority of those who are undermining the integrity of the benefits system.
Those who commit benefit fraud once will lose their out-of-work benefits for three months, a second offence will attract a benefit sanction of six months, and if someone commits fraud three times they face losing their out-of-work benefits for up to three years.
This is a big increase in the penalty, from the current situation where fraudulent claimants lose a maximum of 13 weeks benefit entitlement.
May said the Conservatives will “send out a strong message to people who fleece the taxpayer- you could lose your out of work benefits for three years”.
“This is about fairness. While the whole country is tightening its belt it’s scandalous that thousands are managing to defraud the taxpayer out of billions.”
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Britain: Billions of pounds in the Red thanks to Labour – Annabel Goldie MSP
Annabel Goldie MSP, Scottish Conservative Leader, says:
“Labour’s mismanagement of Britain’s economy has been catastrophic. Debt interest payments alone will soon reach £60 billion, twice the entire amount spent on Scotland’s health service, schools, police, roads and local services every year.
“Scotland’s share of Labour’s debt mountain is an estimated £72 billion. We need a government with a credible plan and the political resolve to put Britain back in the black. The risk of 5 more years of Labour is more waste, higher tax, a worse credit rating, higher interest rates and higher mortgages. Britain is billions of pounds in the red as a result of Labour’s mismanagement of the economy.
“In Scotland, the Conservatives have helped tens of thousands of businesses weather the worst of Labour’s economic storm by ensuring business rates were cut or abolished, a move which the Federation of Small Businesses says has prevented 1 in 8 small firms from going bust.
“We have to deliver that kind of real help right across the United Kingdom.
“That is why a Conservative Government would scrap Labour’s tax on jobs, get credit flowing again, protect and create jobs to boost the recovery, and get to grips with Labour’s debt. Dither and delay would risk the recovery, not help it. The time has come for action, and for change.”
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Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg on election “two horse race”
The rank hypocrisy of Nick Clegg on “two-horse races”
Nick Clegg claimed a couple of days ago that the general election is not a two-horse race.
As the BBC reports, he said:
“This isn’t the old politics of a two-horse race between Labour and the Conservative Party.”
For anyone familiar with Liberal Democrat election literature in their target seats, this claim from their leader will come as something of a surprise.
Take, for example, the below leaflet the party has been distributing in Sheffield Hallam, where the Lib Dem candidate is “local campaigner” and incumbent MP, er, Nick Clegg:
Forgetting the disingenuously skewed graph for a moment, if it’s a two-horse race in Sheffield Hallam on account of the Labour Party starting in a distant third place on 19%, then what difference is there with the national battle at this election – where the Liberal Democrats start a distant third with a similar percentage of the vote and fewer than 10% of the seats?
People of Britain: it’s a two-horse race here – only the Conservatives can beat to win this general election and form a government. Voting Lib Dem only helps the Labour Party remain in office.
Jonathan Isaby
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May 6th announced as date of General Election UK
The General Election is finally called
Tuesday, April 6 2010
David Cameron has welcomed the official announcement of the General Election date.
The election is a choice between five more years of Gordon Brown’s tired government making things worse - or change with the Conservatives, who have the energy, leadership and values to get Britain moving again.
Speaking to supporters this morning, David Cameron will say that the Consevatives are “fighting this election for the great ignored”.
“Young, old, rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight. They start our businesses, operate our factories, teach our children, clean our streets, grow our food, keep us safe. They work hard, pay their taxes, obey the law”, he will say.
“They’re good, decent people – they’re the people of Britain and they just want a reason to believe that anything is still possible in Britain.”
“This election is about giving them that reason, giving them that hope”.
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Labour will put the boot into Britains recovery
Labour will kill the recovery
Monday, April 5 2010
The Conservatives have launched a poster as part of a wider campaign highlighting how Labour’s job tax will kill the recovery.
“Labour have confirmed today that they are going ahead with a national insurance tax rise on jobs that Britain’s business leaders say will endanger jobs”, said George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor.
The Conservatives have also unveiled new research showing how National Insurance has become Labour’s favourite stealth tax:
- Total receipts from National Insurance have risen over five times faster than income tax receipts over the last decade.
- Average National Insurance Contributions (NICs) per family have risen over twelve times as much as average income tax receipts per family over the same period.
- In that time Gordon Brown cut the basic rate of income tax once (as part of the 10p tax con) but he increased National Insurance rates in three different ways – and that’s even before Labour’s new tax on jobs planned for 2011
“With Gordon Brown now finally forced to call the election, the choice is clear”, Osborne added.
“Labour’s jobs tax and debt will stamp out the green shoots and kill the recovery. Conservative plans to cut wasteful government spending and stop the jobs tax will get Britain working.”
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Alan Sugar thinks small business are moaners who live in Disney World – Appointed by Labour on April Fools Day UK
Sugar appointment criticised
Philip Hammond has criticised Labour’s announcement that Lord Alan Sugar will lead a new government task force designed to fight the corner of small businesses against the banks.
“Only Labour could announce on April Fool’s day that it had appointed the man who called credit-starved small businesses ‘moaners’ who lived in ‘Disney World’ to be the adjudicator on their applications for bank loans”, he said.
Lord Mandelson has selected Lord Sugar to sit on the task force which will set up the Small Business Credit Adjudicator. Lord Mandelson believes the people he has chosen “… understand the critical importance of new finance and credit flow to the growth of small, innovative companies”.
But Lord Sugar said last year: “The moaners are bust… they don’t need the bank, they need an insolvency practitioner”.
This comes on the same day that the Federation of Small Businesses, the British Retail Consortium and 23 business leaders attacked Labour’s planned tax on jobs.
“No wonder no-one believes Lord Mandelson’s claims to be the champion of small business when Labour would rather tax jobs and the recovery than cut government waste”, Hammond added.
Well this is news that small business can do without. Clearly Lord Alan Sugar has nothing in common with small business and is merely another puppet of Labour.
Jim Ferguson
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Captains of Industry and Business Leaders are Backing the Conservatives UK
Top Business Leaders Back Tories On Tax
9:42am UK, Thursday April 01, 2010
Ruth Barnett, Sky News Online
A group of business leaders have written a letter backing the Conservatives’ proposal to halt a planned rise in National Insurance.
David Cameron described it as a “very important moment in the election campaign”.
The executive chairman of Marks and Spencers, Sir Stuart Rose, and easyJet entrepreneur Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou are among the 23 people to have signed the letter, which is published in the Daily Telegraph.
The signatories employ around half a million workers between them.
They agree with shadow chancellor George Osborne that increasing NI by 1p next April, as Labour plans to do, is bad news for the economy.
“The Government’s proposal to increase national insurance, placing an additional tax on jobs, comes at exactly the wrong time in the economic cycle,” the letter says.
The Labour Party feel that the Conservatives’ plan has not been properly costed and not properly thought through.
Sky’s political correspondent Joey Jones
“In a personal capacity, we welcome George Osborne’s plan to stop the proposed increase in national insurance by cutting Government waste.”
Mr Cameron told BBC Breakfast: “These household names – people like Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s and Mothercare – are saying that Labour’s plans to put up National Insurance contributions are the biggest threat to the recovery.
“They are saying there is no threat to the recovery from cutting waste in 2010 but there is a threat to the recovery from putting up National Insurance contributions.
“Labour have said the whole thing is that we can secure the recovery. Well, today that plank of their whole approach has been removed.”
Chancellor Alistair Darling pledged to introduce the rise as a way of paying off some of the nation’s debts.
But Mr Osborne said he would axe the increase for people earning less than £45,000 if his party wins power at the next election. He said he would pay for this by finding efficiency savings worth £12bn.
Mr Darling counters that Mr Osborne’s policy is at odds with the Conservatives’ claim they would cut the deficit sooner and deeper than the Government plans.
Treasury Chief Secretary Liam Byrne said the Conservatives were not able to fund their promise on NI.
“No business goes to its shareholders with unfunded promises – but that’s exactly what the Tories are doing,” he said.
The captains of industry and top business leaders are fully aware of the failure of this Labour Government. They are giving their full backing to the Conservatives, because they know we have the experience and common sense, to get rid of Labour’s crippling debt, but not at the expense of putting more businesses out of action, or risking the creation of new jobs.
Members of the public whose jobs are hanging by a thread need to take note and ensure their vote is for the Conservatives. Another term of Labour could spell disaster for them and everyone else in the United Kingdom.
Jim Ferguson
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Brown caught misleading people again with wrong immigration data UK
The figures Gordon Brown gave in a podcast about immigration were wrong, the statistics watchdog has told the Prime Minister in an open letter.
The PM’s speech was correct but his podcast was not, the letter says
Mr Brown “did not use comparable” sets of data when he discussed the number of people who had come to Britain in recent years, the note the chair of the UK Statistics Authority said.
A statement from Downing Street said it accepted some of the numbers used were unclear and not strictly comparable.
The Prime Minister used the podcast to talk about his points system and reassure working families that the system is fair.
“Some people talk as if net inward migration is rising. In fact, it is falling – down from 237,000 in 2007, to 163,000 in 2008, to provisional figures of 147,000 last year,” he said.
“Some people talk as if all immigrants stay here forever. In fact, most come for short periods and then return to their own country.”
But the chair of the statistics authority, Sir Michael Scholar, said the figure for 2007 should have been lower – the official number was 233,000, not 237,000.
It means the scale of the fall is less dramatic than Mr Brown implied.
There is an urgent need for immediate steps to properly control immigration instead of the free for all flood of migrants some with no skills and many who cant even speak English.
Labour systematically ignored the warnings just to rub the rights nose in it and in the hope of getting more votes. They betrayed the interests of Britain and the British people and now growing pressure mounts on all major frontline services with education, healthcare and the prisons bursting under the strain of an endless flood of people invited into the UK by Labour.
Labour lied to us all.
Jim Ferguson
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Conservatives to offer real help for small business UK
I am pleased to see some real help being promised for small business. Its encouraging that small business is being recognised for the part it plays by the Conservatives who understand the importance of the fact that we are a nation of traders and that small business accounts for 80% of the revenue raised.
Jim Ferguson
Conservative tax reform to aid self employed
Wednesday, March 31 2010
Mark Prisk, the Shadow Business Minister, has announced that a Conservative Government would undertake a full and fundamental review of small business taxation, including IR35.
The aim will be to provide a simpler, clearer and lasting tax regime, so businesses can plan with confidence.
“For the last 13 years, Labour have constantly meddled with the tax rules for freelancers and self-employed, Prisk said. “IR35 has especially proved to over-complex, uncertain and often unfair”.
IR35 has cost business £73 million over 10 years but it has barely raised revenue for the Treasury. Prisk criticised Gordon Brown for making it harder to be self-employed at a time when Britain should be open for business.
“This is why a Conservative Government would mandate the independent Office of Tax Simplification to undertake a fundamental review of current arrangements with the aim of providing a clearer, lasting and fairer tax regime”.
This announcement is in addition to previous plesges to simplify the tax system, cut Corporation Tax for small firms, and make small business rate relief automatic.
“Small businesses cannot afford 5 more years of Gordon Brown”, Prisk added. “Only the Conservatives have the energy and the ideas to get Britain working by boosting enterprise”.
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