News from the New Party

Stop playing Scrooge Darling, we need tax cuts now

With a two-hour Christmas dinner this year costing taxpayers £72million, and new figures* showing the UK still slumped in recession and dole queues stretching**, New Party leader Richard Vass called on Chancellor Alistair Darling today to spread some festive cheer and stop playing Scrooge with taxpayers.

National debt is growing by £100,000 every 10 seconds, meanwhile official statistics* show the UK is still in recession while the US and all major European economies have emerged from it. The Government needs to stop playing mean Scrooge with us taxpayers while playing generous Scrooge with banks, Richard Vass said today.

He said: "Brown and Darling said our economy was best placed to weather the recession. What a joke! The economy has contracted by 6% since the recession began during the economic quarter to July 2008. Their policies have failed. The only solution they have to the problem is to take more of our money.

"Well it is time Darling started playing generous Scrooge to all and not just banks. Taxes can't deal with this level of debt. We need to encourage wealth creation. We need people spending and to do that they need money in their pockets not in mean Chancellor Scrooge's pockets," he said.

And as Christmas arrives it is the poorest who are hit hardest by their humbug. New figures today** show 58 council areas across the UK have more than a thousand people who have been on the dole for longer than 12 months. The same figure last year was 19 council areas.

Richard: "Labour has always touted itself as the party of the poor. In reality it is the party creating the poor through economic mismanagement. If the Chancellor really wants to bring stability back to the country then he needs to act by utilising the New Party's five steps to growth. These are:

• Remove the lowest paid from the tax system by raising the tax threshold to a full-time minimum wage
• Abolish business rates
• Reduce corporation tax to 15% with a target of 10%
• Introduce a flat rate of tax at 25% with a target of 22% for all.
• Repeal all employment laws that inhibit recruitment of new staff

"We can only hope that Darling has a Scrooge-like realisation that his path is the wrong one and do the things that need to be done. Otherwise the words Happy Christmas this year will ring very hollow indeed," he said.

* The latest revised figures from the Office for National Statistics show a 0.2% contraction in the economy during July-September this year. Analysts were hoping for a revision down to 0.1%. www.ons.gov.uk
**The latest report from the TUC shows the number of people spending their second successive Christmas on the dole will double to over 200,000 this year. Areas such as Sheffield (+264%) and Dudley (+256%) have borne the brunt of the crisis. www.tuc.org.uk