In recent posts, I have bemoaned the current policies followed by the current Conservative leadership. Saying frankly, that these policies are not conservative at all. It's easy to snipe from the sidelines and just be critical without offering an alternative so, I won't do that. Here is my brand of conservatism.
Taxes
Unsurprisingly, I am for low taxes. I was tempted to say no taxes but that probably isn't realistic. Also since I believe that taxes are too high and that taxes start too early, I am in favour of radically altering the tax free allowance. The Conservatives should commit to raising the point at which a person pays tax, to £20,000, within the course of the next parliament. At a stroke, if I can use that phrase, this would take many low paid people out of the tax net completely. This would also sweeten the pot for those moving from welfare dependency into paid employment (see below).
National Insurance Contributions (NIC) are a tax by another name. It is time to end the farce of the separation and just roll this into Income Tax. Since this would then be part of general taxation, the low paid (see above) would again benefit.
Tax thresholds are too low. The rate at which the higher band comes in, £31,865 is simply to early This catches far too many people in the higher rate bracket. Raise this immediately, to £35,000, which would mean £1,200 in the pockets of the 'squeezed middle' each year and then to £40,000 over the life of the next parliament, letting people keep another £2,000 of their money (based on the current 40% rate).
Having said that, I want to reduce the benefit of this tax cut (maybe I could be an MP, with such bare-faced cheek!). I want to reduce the value by reducing the higher rate from 40% to 35%, immediately. Then to 30% over the course of the next parliament.
Oh, and these reduced rates would include the effect of adding in NIC to Income Tax! So the top rate of tax, inclusive of NIC, would soon be 30%
Higher rate tax - abolish it completely. It is just for political posturing.
Inheritance Tax - abolish it completely - why should something that has already been taxed, be taxed again?
Capital Gains Tax - a flat rate 15% on gains and no tax free allowances.
Corporation tax - drop this to 15% over the course of the next parliament. However, change the rules on allowances for Inter-company payments, which serve to dramatically reduce a company's taxable income and sends money to overseas tax havens. Limit such deductions to 10% of turnover. We might lose a Starbucks or similar companies but I think that a company like Amazon or Apple will still want to remain with UK operations!
Fuel Taxes - Tell the 'greenies' to walk-off somewhere. If I can use a four letter word! Same to those urban dwellers that have good good established mass transport infrastructures. Then cut duties by 10% immediately rising to 20% over the life of the next parliament.
Please read the above again. Why would the average voter not be attracted by such a policy platform? The overwhelming beneficiaries are the lower paid and the so called 'squeezed middle' - they would get to keep more of their money.
You are probably not yet convinced because you are thinking , 'yes that's all well and good but how do we pay for it?'
We look to Hollywood for our inspiration. Hollywood, or Elstree, if you want to be small-minded and nationalistic, are not usually happy places for conservatives. These are hot-beds of liberal luvvies who, having made a pile of money by acting, then feel obligated to foist there warped viewpoints of a subsidized world where 'make-believe' is real, upon us all. But I digress!
Hollywood is familiar with adaptations, so we, Conservatives, take a leaf from their book.
'Honey I shrunk the government!' Okay, so it isn't very catchy and does need some work but let's keep this as a working title for now.
Civil Service Pay
Studies regularly show that this is around 8% higher than for those in the private sector. This is 'justified' on the grounds that people in the civil service are more highly 'qualified' than those in the private sector. Okay, so leave aside, for the moment, any thoughts about, if they are so much smarter, how come we are in this mess?' That won't be productive.
Instead, an across the board cut of 8% for all. Further, for those earning more than three times the national average wage of £25,000, a cut of 15%, across the board. These cuts to apply at both the national and local levels of government. No doubt this will cause some of these high-flying and (earning) civil servants to seek positions elsewhere but that can only be to the betterment of the real economy as those super-brains get re-deployed into the productive business arena - so win-win!
Limit sick-day absences to the private sector average. Currently, public sector 'sickies' are more than 60% higher than in the private sector. So, taking civil servants out of the public sector and into the private sector could also see reductions in NHS needs as these ex-civil servants move to the healthier private sector environment - win-win again!
Departmental Cuts
Only one sacred cow - Defence. The current level maintained but we rein back on overseas entanglements.
All other departments, cut by 5% a year, for each year of the next parliament. That is 5% from their 2013 budget out-turn. Government must become smaller.
Over and above these reductions, abolish the Department for Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Culture, Music and Sports. Similarly, do away with the Welsh Office and the Scottish Office. Also abolish the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister!
International Aid
Reduce the budget by 50%, immediately. Require that the remainder is only spent on British produced goods.
Then onto local government. What do people really want from their local councils? I would suggest refuse collections (weekly, if you please) and roads that don't have potholes every 100 yards! Social services - not really - it's not as if they do a good job at it anyway! Libraries? How many people actually visit them nowadays? We live in an digital age, when people want a book, they get it on a Kindle. When they need reference information, they data-mine the internet. Schools? Let schools continue down the road to Free School status and get the bureaucratic meddlers out of the way. LGBT drop-in centres? Do I need to say anything? Tourism promotion? Business services? No, no, no!
So then, dramatic reductions in local council expenditure and personnel levels.
Police
I would propose a simple solution. Set 2013 Budgets as the base-line. Then say that if they can have a workforce that is 70% front line and 30% back-room administration staff, then their budgets are maintained. For each 5% deviation from this ratio, they lose or gain 5% of their budget. For the avoidance of doubt, front-line means the total time spent by police service employees outside of the station relative to the total time available (time spent outside divided by headcount times working hours) People want to see a visible police service not something that they just pay for!
Transport
Immediately scrap the HS2 programme. Other than some self-interested civil servants, no one seems to want this and the already high costs are only going one way. So abandon it. If there really is a demand to shave 15 minutes off of a train journey then some private enterprise will see the opportunity and then invest their money into it.
Welfare
Unsurprisingly, I see this as a significant contributor to spending reductions. We need to get welfare back to being a safety net and not a lifestyle choice!
The welfare cap to be reduced to £15,000, with immediate effect. It cannot ever be right that it pays more to be on welfare than it does to be in work. Within this welfare cap, housing benefit to not exceed £5,000. It is not the business of government to subsidize private landlords!
Statutory sick pay to be abolished.
We are probably not there yet, in terms of balancing the budget and matching cuts in taxation with reductions in spending, so..........
Quangos
I have said here before, what is needed is a real bonfire of the quangos. Start from the basis that all are abolished. Every single one, 'at a stroke'. Then only absorb those activities back into the appropriate departments, if they are absolutely necessary. Oh, and by the way, the funding reduced by the abolition of these quangos does not count towards the departmental cuts mentioned earlier.
Balanced Budget and Debt
The budget must be balanced. So income as a minimum, matches (or exceeds if possible,) expenditure. This to be a statutory obligation - written into law! However, before the budget is balanced, we need to tackle the national debt.
So, we treat this like a mortgage. We say that the current debt is to be paid-off over 25 years! So, when the budget is being calculated we include, on the expenditure side, something around £50 billion to cover debt reduction. Can't be done? Then the departmental cuts need to be deeper. We cannot burden future generations with the level of national debt, that the UK now carries - £1.3 TRILLION and rising. Over the years, use the debt-interest reduction windfall to pay more off of the debt.
Conservatives cannot just be about deficit reduction, we must be about debt reduction as well. That is how we serve all the people of the whole UK.
Taxes
Unsurprisingly, I am for low taxes. I was tempted to say no taxes but that probably isn't realistic. Also since I believe that taxes are too high and that taxes start too early, I am in favour of radically altering the tax free allowance. The Conservatives should commit to raising the point at which a person pays tax, to £20,000, within the course of the next parliament. At a stroke, if I can use that phrase, this would take many low paid people out of the tax net completely. This would also sweeten the pot for those moving from welfare dependency into paid employment (see below).
National Insurance Contributions (NIC) are a tax by another name. It is time to end the farce of the separation and just roll this into Income Tax. Since this would then be part of general taxation, the low paid (see above) would again benefit.
Tax thresholds are too low. The rate at which the higher band comes in, £31,865 is simply to early This catches far too many people in the higher rate bracket. Raise this immediately, to £35,000, which would mean £1,200 in the pockets of the 'squeezed middle' each year and then to £40,000 over the life of the next parliament, letting people keep another £2,000 of their money (based on the current 40% rate).
Having said that, I want to reduce the benefit of this tax cut (maybe I could be an MP, with such bare-faced cheek!). I want to reduce the value by reducing the higher rate from 40% to 35%, immediately. Then to 30% over the course of the next parliament.
Oh, and these reduced rates would include the effect of adding in NIC to Income Tax! So the top rate of tax, inclusive of NIC, would soon be 30%
Higher rate tax - abolish it completely. It is just for political posturing.
Inheritance Tax - abolish it completely - why should something that has already been taxed, be taxed again?
Capital Gains Tax - a flat rate 15% on gains and no tax free allowances.
Corporation tax - drop this to 15% over the course of the next parliament. However, change the rules on allowances for Inter-company payments, which serve to dramatically reduce a company's taxable income and sends money to overseas tax havens. Limit such deductions to 10% of turnover. We might lose a Starbucks or similar companies but I think that a company like Amazon or Apple will still want to remain with UK operations!
Fuel Taxes - Tell the 'greenies' to walk-off somewhere. If I can use a four letter word! Same to those urban dwellers that have good good established mass transport infrastructures. Then cut duties by 10% immediately rising to 20% over the life of the next parliament.
Please read the above again. Why would the average voter not be attracted by such a policy platform? The overwhelming beneficiaries are the lower paid and the so called 'squeezed middle' - they would get to keep more of their money.
You are probably not yet convinced because you are thinking , 'yes that's all well and good but how do we pay for it?'
We look to Hollywood for our inspiration. Hollywood, or Elstree, if you want to be small-minded and nationalistic, are not usually happy places for conservatives. These are hot-beds of liberal luvvies who, having made a pile of money by acting, then feel obligated to foist there warped viewpoints of a subsidized world where 'make-believe' is real, upon us all. But I digress!
Hollywood is familiar with adaptations, so we, Conservatives, take a leaf from their book.
'Honey I shrunk the government!' Okay, so it isn't very catchy and does need some work but let's keep this as a working title for now.
Civil Service Pay
Studies regularly show that this is around 8% higher than for those in the private sector. This is 'justified' on the grounds that people in the civil service are more highly 'qualified' than those in the private sector. Okay, so leave aside, for the moment, any thoughts about, if they are so much smarter, how come we are in this mess?' That won't be productive.
Instead, an across the board cut of 8% for all. Further, for those earning more than three times the national average wage of £25,000, a cut of 15%, across the board. These cuts to apply at both the national and local levels of government. No doubt this will cause some of these high-flying and (earning) civil servants to seek positions elsewhere but that can only be to the betterment of the real economy as those super-brains get re-deployed into the productive business arena - so win-win!
Limit sick-day absences to the private sector average. Currently, public sector 'sickies' are more than 60% higher than in the private sector. So, taking civil servants out of the public sector and into the private sector could also see reductions in NHS needs as these ex-civil servants move to the healthier private sector environment - win-win again!
Departmental Cuts
Only one sacred cow - Defence. The current level maintained but we rein back on overseas entanglements.
All other departments, cut by 5% a year, for each year of the next parliament. That is 5% from their 2013 budget out-turn. Government must become smaller.
Over and above these reductions, abolish the Department for Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Culture, Music and Sports. Similarly, do away with the Welsh Office and the Scottish Office. Also abolish the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister!
International Aid
Reduce the budget by 50%, immediately. Require that the remainder is only spent on British produced goods.
Then onto local government. What do people really want from their local councils? I would suggest refuse collections (weekly, if you please) and roads that don't have potholes every 100 yards! Social services - not really - it's not as if they do a good job at it anyway! Libraries? How many people actually visit them nowadays? We live in an digital age, when people want a book, they get it on a Kindle. When they need reference information, they data-mine the internet. Schools? Let schools continue down the road to Free School status and get the bureaucratic meddlers out of the way. LGBT drop-in centres? Do I need to say anything? Tourism promotion? Business services? No, no, no!
So then, dramatic reductions in local council expenditure and personnel levels.
Police
I would propose a simple solution. Set 2013 Budgets as the base-line. Then say that if they can have a workforce that is 70% front line and 30% back-room administration staff, then their budgets are maintained. For each 5% deviation from this ratio, they lose or gain 5% of their budget. For the avoidance of doubt, front-line means the total time spent by police service employees outside of the station relative to the total time available (time spent outside divided by headcount times working hours) People want to see a visible police service not something that they just pay for!
Transport
Immediately scrap the HS2 programme. Other than some self-interested civil servants, no one seems to want this and the already high costs are only going one way. So abandon it. If there really is a demand to shave 15 minutes off of a train journey then some private enterprise will see the opportunity and then invest their money into it.
Welfare
Unsurprisingly, I see this as a significant contributor to spending reductions. We need to get welfare back to being a safety net and not a lifestyle choice!
The welfare cap to be reduced to £15,000, with immediate effect. It cannot ever be right that it pays more to be on welfare than it does to be in work. Within this welfare cap, housing benefit to not exceed £5,000. It is not the business of government to subsidize private landlords!
Statutory sick pay to be abolished.
We are probably not there yet, in terms of balancing the budget and matching cuts in taxation with reductions in spending, so..........
Quangos
I have said here before, what is needed is a real bonfire of the quangos. Start from the basis that all are abolished. Every single one, 'at a stroke'. Then only absorb those activities back into the appropriate departments, if they are absolutely necessary. Oh, and by the way, the funding reduced by the abolition of these quangos does not count towards the departmental cuts mentioned earlier.
Balanced Budget and Debt
The budget must be balanced. So income as a minimum, matches (or exceeds if possible,) expenditure. This to be a statutory obligation - written into law! However, before the budget is balanced, we need to tackle the national debt.
So, we treat this like a mortgage. We say that the current debt is to be paid-off over 25 years! So, when the budget is being calculated we include, on the expenditure side, something around £50 billion to cover debt reduction. Can't be done? Then the departmental cuts need to be deeper. We cannot burden future generations with the level of national debt, that the UK now carries - £1.3 TRILLION and rising. Over the years, use the debt-interest reduction windfall to pay more off of the debt.
Conservatives cannot just be about deficit reduction, we must be about debt reduction as well. That is how we serve all the people of the whole UK.
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