UKIP Economic Spokesman launches an attack on Labour for offering peanuts

[WiseOwl]

UKIP Economics Spokesman Patrick O'Flynn has attacked Labour for offering working people a "total insult" tax policy. He said Labour had not pledged to raise the tax free personal allowance and calculated that its policy of bringing in a 10% starting rate of tax would be worth just 42p per week to the average worker – not even enough to pay for a second class stamp or a bag of peanuts.

He said: "UKIP has fought this election as the party of working people and we will carry on making that case right up to polling day.

"Our party has had as policy for many years the idea that people on the minimum wage should be taken out of income tax.

"Our key taxation policy in this election is a pledge to raise the personal allowance to at least £13,000 during the course of the next parliament. That is a fully costed, funded plan which is better than anything offered by the other parties.

"Our policy will see the tax bill of a typical working person cut by nearly £500 a year compared to today, some £100 more than the coalition parties which offer a diluted version that seeks to raise the allowance to £12,500.

"Labour alone has not committed to any rise in the personal allowance. Instead its alleged big idea is an old idea, one it has tried and then dumped before - a 10p in the pound starting rate of tax, a device it brought in and then scrapped during the Gordon Brown years.

"Given that Labour has said this introductory rate is to be financed out of funds generated by the abolition of the transferrable element of the tax allowance for married couples and civil partners, we can calculate with reasonable precision what will be on offer.

"Abolishing the marriage tax allowance would save £520 million in 2015-16 and Labour itself says that its new 10p rate is designed to apply to 24 million lower and middle earners.

"So it would save a typical taxpayer not £500 nor even £400 a year but an average of just £21.67 per year. That amounts to just 42 pence per week.

"The shocking truth is that Labour's flagship offer to working people would not even pay for a first class stamp or a bag of peanuts each week.

"If it is designed to preserve a fig leaf of respectability around Labour's claim to be a party with the interests of working people at heart, then it does not even achieve that purpose. In fact it is a total insult.

"So Labour has once more demonstrated the contempt in which it holds working people. It has learned no lessons from its past fiscal failures. It remains the party that thinks it can spend your money better than you can.

"We will be going into those neglected Labour heartlands during the remainder of this campaign with a compelling message for working people: Under UKIP, no tax on the minimum wage. Under Labour – peanuts."

[WiseOwl]

Brilliant!