Brown's Tax Bombshell

George Osborne said the Pre-Budget Report represents “the greatest failure of public policy for a generation” after Alistair Darling announced plans to double the national debt to more than £1 trillion.

Mr Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, described the report as a “Tax Bombshell Budget” and stressed that a debt of £1 trillion was “the bill for Labour’s decade of irresponsibility”.

“It is confirmation of the time-old truth that, in the end, all Labour chancellors run out of money and all Labour governments bring this country to the verge of bankruptcy.”

Eric Ollerenshaw, the Prospective Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Lancaster and Fleetwood said: “This is like a desperate tragedy with Brown as the patient, hooked on compulsive borrowing to pay off yet another credit card – except it’s the rest of us who will have to pick up the final bill through our taxes”.

The Shadow Chancellor stressed that the lowering of VAT and raising of the top income tax band were measures “designed to distract attention” from the massive permanent tax rises in the Pre-Budget Report:

• £20 billion on National Insurance
• £10 billion on income tax
• £5 billion on alcohol and cigarettes
• £2 billion on pensions

These increases amount to nearly £1,500 for every family over the next Parliament – and by 2012/13, anyone earning more than £20,000 will be paying more tax.

George Osborne condemned Labour for putting an “unexploded tax bombshell” underneath the future economic recovery, and stressed that Labour’s temporary tax cuts will lead to higher taxes in the long run:

“Labour has done it again. Massive borrowing. Rising unemployment. Tax giveaways for Christmas paid for by tax rises for life. This Budget is all about the political cycle and not the economic cycle.”