From binning the ‘unacceptable’ NI hike to axing food import tariffs, here’s budget speech Rishi Sunak should give
IT’S the Chancellor’s big day today – the much-anticipated spring mini-Budget.
At 12.30pm, Rishi Sunak will unveil his plans to help tackle the oncoming storm of sky-high fuel prices and the prospect of double-digit inflation.
Yet while he is expected to offer some calming measures – such as a fuel duty cut – the proposals are likely to fall short of the rescue package hard-working Brits need.
Here, we suggest what he should say . . .
"MR SPEAKER. I will be honest with the British people today, as I have been since becoming Chancellor.
Together, we are staring into the abyss of a new dark age, perhaps the biggest economic crisis in our lifetimes. No finance minister in modern history has faced such daunting challenges.
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We have broken free from a viral catastrophe, probably created in a Chinese laboratory, only to be engulfed by a needless war created by a Russian monster in the Kremlin.
In each case, we are witnessing the failure of a totalitarian state. It is an example I intend to draw upon in today’s spring statement. Between the demise of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair’s socialism by stealth, we have drifted from sound economics to spending and borrowing like drunken sailors.
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That will end from today. Having voted six years ago to leave the sclerotic EU, we are better placed than almost any other country to deal with this crisis.
We are free to cut taxes — and we will. We are free to slash red tape — and we will. We can prune the dead weight of the six million public sector employees — including the civil servants who have been on a go-slow for decades. And we will.
We can streamline The Blob, cut the “green crap” and get fracking. And we will. The Treasury knee-jerk reaction to any crisis is higher taxes. A strong Tory Chancellor must always resist.
I’ve got a bit more money in my pocket than I expected — up to £75billion — so I will start today by repairing the damage.
In my last Budget I announced National Insurance contributions would jump by 1.25 percentage points next month.
I now admit this is an unacceptable tax on jobs and many low earners, and flies in the face of everything the tax-cutting Conservative Party stands for.
I could put it off for a year — or exempt all low-earners. Instead, I will scrap it altogether.
I’ve got a bit more money in my pocket than I expected — up to £75billion — so I will start today by repairing the damage.
The £12billion a year it was to raise for health and social care will be found by much-needed efficiency savings, not least in the bloated £180BILLION NHS budget.
The pandemic proved the NHS is brilliant at saving lives and useless at saving money.
Also today, I will scrap the punitive hike in business tax which, for reasons I can scarcely believe, I raised from 19p to 25p in the £1 next year.
Labour Lefties will scream blue murder, but low taxes encourage high revenues and we need a lean, mean business machine to pay for government services. Such as the NHS.
Firms must also be cut loose from the cold, dead hands of old EU regulation.
I have appointed ex-Brexit Secretary David Frost to light a bonfire of red tape and set working families free.
He will start by raising the limit of children aged under two per carer from three to ten, slashing costs and expanding childcare access at a stroke.
Prune dead weight
There will be further help for hardworking families. Tariffs on ALL food imports — the biggest single cost in low-income budgets — will be abolished from midnight tonight.
And to help millions cope with soaring pump prices, I will take The Sun’s sensible advice and slash fuel duty by 5p. Mr Speaker, you might ask where all this money is coming from.
The tax cuts should pay for themselves. The economy is raring to go after Covid — turbocharged, at a time of low unemployment, by a workforce that can find a job if it wants one.
These jobs will be available on an equal opportunity basis to any civil servant who needs to adapt to life on the outside. From now on, natural wastage will cut the bloated six-million-strong state payroll, thus avoiding painful redundancies.
Public sector job vacancies will stay unfilled where possible. Last week’s DVLA scandal over work-shy civil servants blew the lid off a long- running sore in Britain’s feather-bedded public sector.
Thousands of Swansea staff did no work on full pay “from home” — sofa-surfing and Netflix-bingeing while desperate motorists waited months for a licence.
This “sod-the-public” culture — excuse the language Mr Speaker — insults the taxpayers who fund their wages, and must cease.
Civil servants — including staff at the Treasury which is running on empty — will lose their £4,000 London weighting and season ticket allowances if they won’t come in to the workplace.
We will transform UK plc into one of the world’s most robust, competitive and prosperous economies.
They can also forget about annual bonuses worth thousands of pounds.
The state — including the sacred NHS cow and its parasite quangos — has grown into an inefficient monster employing 5.3million people at a cost of £190billion a year. That’s 25p in every £1 of taxpayers’ money.
A five per cent annual efficiency saving — a fat £8BILLION — would be routine in any comparable commercial enterprise.
The Office for National Statistics estimates civil servants are paid £1,300 for every £1,000 paid in the private sector — a 30 per cent difference.
They also enjoy inflation-linked pensions, almost extinct for everyone else, with Rolls-Royce retirements for senior staff.
Hard-working taxpayers are on the hook for almost £1TRILLION for this unfunded pension lark — that’s half the cash created by the entire UK economy each year.
This cannot go on. We need to switch from a colossal unearned perk to the money-purchase schemes of the private sector.
Mr Speaker, we face tough times. I cannot stand here and say I can save every single job, protect every single business. That’s just simply not possible.
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But if we press ahead with these long overdue reforms, we will transform UK plc into one of the world’s most robust, competitive and prosperous economies.
Without them we are in deep doo-doo. I commend this statement to the House."
