Brooks Newmark on the 10p tax rate

I'm sure that I'm not the only person in Westminster who's thinking that the Government has lurched from credit-crunch to credibility crunch in recent weeks.

I'm sure that I'm not the only person in Westminster who's thinking that the Government has lurched from credit-crunch to credibility crunch in recent weeks.

Since Gordon Brown entered office, and left Alistair Darling sitting in his old one, British taxpayers have been subjected to so many U-turns that we might be forgiven for thinking that the whole Government is practicing for a driving test.

After the Chancellor's change of heart over Capital Gains Tax and his dither over the nationalisation of Northern Rock he's now been left holding the poisoned chalice over the abolition of the 10p starting rate of Income Tax.

There is a serious principle at stake here and that is fairness. Of course governments sometimes raise taxes and sometimes they lower them. On the whole most people would prefer the latter and I would tend to agree with them. But the minimum expectation is that the burden should be fairly distributed.

It is surely without precedent for a government to increase the tax burden on the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society at a time of increasing economic uncertainty.

The defining feature of this Government's taxation policy has become the sheer difficulty in unravelling their complex and stealthy tax packages. Perhaps this explains why the abolition of the 10p starting rate was announced in the 2007 Budget but not in Gordon Brown's speech to Parliament.

With a theatrical flourish aimed at the Labour leadership he announced only a cut in the basic rate of Income Tax and kept deathly quiet about the devil in the detail which would leave over 5 million of the poorest in our society worse off.

Gordon Brown's last act of political cynicism while still Chancellor was to ensure that his successor took the flack for the unpopular bit of his decision while he took the credit for the 2p cut.

During the passage of the Finance Bill next week MPs will finally get a chance to vote on this issue. Let me reassure you all that I and my Conservative colleagues will be voting to make the Government think again about this ill thought out tax hike on some of the most vulnerable people in our community."