Friday, April 09, 2010

Osborne Sticks Knife Into Labour

Labour really does seem to be all over the place on the consequences of the NI increase. George Osborne, in his usual caring manner, has decided to try to find out what their real position is. I suspect he won't have much luck. Here's a letter he has written to Alistair Darling.


Alistair Darling
The Labour Party
39 Victoria Street
London SW1H 0HA

9 April 2010

Dear Alistair,


In the course of today, the Labour Party’s economic policy has collapsed in a heap of contradictions.

In the morning, you attacked our efficiency plans on the grounds that they would reduce public sector headcount – but by lunchtime your own Treasury Minister, Stephen Timms, admitted that your own spending plans meant that “there will be some job losses” (The Daily Politics, BBC 2, 9 April 2010).

On Monday 5 April you told the Today Programme that there would be “no” job losses as a result of your National Insurance rise, an assertion that flies in the face of economic logic and the views of over 80 leading business figures. But today, on the BBC One O’clock News, you admitted in questioning from me that your planned increase in National Insurance will lead to what you describe as “manageable” job losses. Stephen Timms has previously admitted in Parliament on 22 March that there would be “limited” job losses as a result of your jobs tax.

Mr Timms also admitted in a written Parliamentary answer on 7 April that the Treasury will publish an impact assessment on the National Insurance increase, but not before the Election.

What are you trying to hide? Why do you not want the public to know the truth about the jobs losses that your own Treasury officials believe will follow from the National Insurance rise?

It is an open secret that Treasury officials did not recommend the National Insurance rise, and nor did you. As Chancellor, you had it imposed on you by Gordon Brown and Ed Balls. Both men made the cynical political calculation that the public and the business community would not understand the implications of a National Insurance rise, but they have been found out – just as they were on the 10p tax rise. Political calculation trumped sound economic policy, and that is why your Party finds itself at war with British business.

There is now no excuse for concealing from the British people the Treasury’s own internal assessment of the job losses that will follow your National Insurance rise. The public paid for that advice through their taxes, and will pay for the consequences of your policy with their jobs. Last week, I submitted a Freedom of Information request for this vital information of great public interest, and it should be published immediately.

Why are you hiding the truth about your jobs tax from the British people?

As ever

George Osborne


As ever, indeed.

22 comments:

Kitchen said...

...good reply...

john in cheshire said...

Dear Iain, I'm not criticising for once, lol. This is a really good posting. In this way, and step by step the socialists can have the life squeezed from their miserable lives.

Rammie1962 said...

Well, looks like C4 News are going for the jugular, asking the conservatives to release the document from the so called experts explaining where the exact cuts can be made and why haven't they been published to the voters when they have the document themselves... evading the public is the Labour retort right now.... watch this space... Conservatives on the back foot tonight

richard.blogger said...

Osborne will cut 40,000 jobs from public services (how many from my local hospital?) so I really don't see that he's got a leg to stand on.

By the way, please come and support public services at the march and rally in central London tomorrow.

http://www.10410demo.co.uk/

Unknown said...

Anyone else noticed how the drugged up cretins at the BBC have tried to firstly ignore then kill the Twittergate story? No mention the BBC news at all that the sainted Sarah would have read those tweets.

On another matter I notice that the ONLY TWO so called businessmen to come out in support of the Liebour NI rise both work at the BBC. There's a shock!!

Null said...

What a great letter. I think I wrote a letter like that quite recently that resulted in a 'resignation'...

Silent Hunter said...

I wonder if he'll get an answer.

Looks like Labour have been well and truly exposed over this issue.

Good.

Lying bar stewards that they are.

Eddie 180 said...

I don't think the Tories need to take any lectures from Labour about spending plans not adding up.

After 13 years of Labour Government all their spending plans have added up to is a £180 billion pound annual deficit, in an economy which they believe is so wedded to public sector spending, that a £6 billion cut now would throw it back into recession.

norfolkandchance said...

If George Osborne is really "caring" I would expect him to be concerned with finding out who has kidnapped Chris Grayling given that it is so obvious he has disappeared.

Iain Dale said...

No he hasn't. He was on 5 Live today.

................................. said...

I was amused that his letter was addressed, "Alastair Darling, Labour Party" and not "Chancellor of the exchequer, HM Treasury". Almost as if Darling was the shadow chancellor already

thespecialone said...

Richard.blogger if you really do work in the public sector as I do; you will know that the public sector is a bloated inefficient organisation. In my particular department I estimate that they could cut the work force by up to 10% tomorrow and there would be no difference to output. Oh and before you ask, I have also run my own business as well so dont tell me about job losses. What the unions are saying is what unions always do. The unions can foxtrot oscar as far as I am concerned and I have never paid a penny to PCS. Get real. The public sector eats up taxpayers' money. The private sector is the wealth creator. Of course you need public sector workers. But why has the number risen by 750,000 since 1997? Because Brown is a statist. Now he has spent all the money. You know as well as I do that Osborne has stated that there will be no front line job losses. Cuts will be made by not replacing those that leave their 'non-jobs'. You are being told lies by Labour and lies by the union.

Not a sheep said...

'Why are you hiding the truth about your jobs tax from the British people?' Because he has learnt mendacity from Gordon Brown?

Barnacle Bill said...

I don;t think Glove-puppet is Chancellor anymore, he's just another flipper trying to get re-elected, hence addressing it to the skip outside No.11

GarethS said...

Richard,

I hope you don't mind but for brevity's sake, is it ok if we all call you Dick?

Twig said...

Employers NICs are a stealth tax.
They should be included on payslips so that workers can see what is being paid on their behalf.

Better still, implement UKIPs idea of rolling NICs and income tax into one simple flat tax.

We could then release tens of thousands of staff at HMR&C who could be re-trained to do something useful.
...

Jimmy said...

Osborne discussing economics for some reason calls to mind Johnson's aphorism about dogs walking upright.

Victor, NW Kent said...

This is a word to the Labour supporters who post here, either as such or as disgruntled Tories.

For Osborne to save £6-billion from government waste is exactly as hard as the average family on the median income saving 60P a day. Think about that.

Now let's talk about public sector staff reductions - the No.10 spin machine forecasts 20,000 to 40,000 job losses if NI is not put up. It is interesting to note that several quite respectable large organisations forecast that the increase would cost 57,000 jobs, but no matter. The public sector employs a huge number of people - we don't know how many but it is certainly as much as 2-million. For the sake of being benign in argument let us say the average career of a civil servant is 40 years [it isn't by the way]. So we can calculate that about 50,000 of them retire every year. So no redundancies at all would be involved in reducing the public sector by 40,000 jobs.

So nobody need take sides here - just do the simple arithmetic and strip the rhetoric.

The only losers here are the Guardian.

DespairingLiberal said...

Yawn. Blather blather. Does anyone in the other party even read these pointless letters of accusation they routinely send each other? Do they even send them, other than to the press/bloggers? Are they even real, or are they templated in advance and rolled off by computer?

DespairingLiberal said...

Thespecialone - you are right, the waste is hideous, both in terms of pointless staff doing non-jobs and also huge amounts spent on contractors to do the jobs we actually pay civil servants supposedly to do.

I'm glad the Tories openly came out at last and said they will tackle IT expenditure, which has been rampantly, utterly out of control. However, I felt an immediate drop in believability when they said they've been discussing it with the Business Services Association - as the latter exists purely as boosterists for the big consultancies, it's a bit difficult to accept that the end product of that will be a reduction. Still, we'll see. The big contractors are past masters at running rings around both "senior" civil servants and ministers.

Martin S said...

Or, in reply to Jimmy, Gordon Brown walking without hurling a secretary from her chair or throwing phones and office equipment about.

The Remittance Man said...

No mention that the entire Britih political establishment has wasted a week arguing about a sum that actually makes up less than 1% of either party's total spending plans.

We don't need 40,000 useless mouths axed from the civil service due to attrition. We need hundreds of thousands if not a million or two to find P45s in their in-trays on May 7th.