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EXPRESS COMMENT

IF WE CAN CUT BACK THEN SO CAN THE GOVERNMENT

Monday June 23,2008

LABOUR has a new plan to balance the nation’s books: cut the living standards of people who work for a living.

With the official inflation rate running at well over three per cent and the inflation rate for a typical shopping basket running at four times that level, Chancellor Alistair Darling wants wage rises to be held down to two per cent.

Even though the average family is already £400 worse off compared to a year ago because of fuel, food and tax increases, Darling is planning on another 12 months of falling living standards.

He acknowledges that “it will be difficult, it will be tough”. Not for parliamentarians preparing to vote themselves a £40,000 pay rise it won’t.

The Chancellor is right when he warns that the scourge of inflation needs to be tackled. But people would be far more willing to contemplate pay restraint if they thought that the Government was doing its fair share of economising.

Yet, instead of seeking better value for money, Labour continues to spend taxpayers’ money like water, with billions being wasted on grandiose schemes such as ID cards and the 2012 Olympics.

By cutting out waste, ceasing to interfere in every nook and cranny of national life and concentrating on essential services, the Government could actually return substantial sums to citizens in tax cuts.

But it has no intention of doing so.

Far from being committed to long-term stability, Labour is ushering in an era of economic anarchy in which those with industrial muscle will gain at the expense of those without.