UKIP accuses the Chancellor of attacking enterprise and betraying the self-employed
Responding to the Budget UKIP Economy Spokesman Mark
Reckless AM said:
“The Conservatives have today lost any claim they may have had
to represent either White Van Man or the many women who create businesses as a
route to combining a continuing economic contribution with family
life.
“In this Budget, Philip Hammond has launched an unnecessary and
foolish attack on enterprise. To claim to be making life better for the employed
by making life worse for the self-employed is the worst kind of levelling down.
It is an approach more befitting of big state socialism than of a party that
claims to understand wealth creation.
“Self-employed people create their own jobs. They have no paid
holidays, sickness benefits or company pension schemes and in fact no guaranteed
income at all.
“They show guts and determination. And like the rest of the
electorate they were promised that the Tories would not be whacking up national
insurance rates in this parliament. In their case it is going to be a promise
broken.”
Mr Reckless added: "The growth and borrowing projections
announced in today's Budget show that the Brexit vote of last June has had no
negative impact on the economy and that the dire forecasts of George Osborne
were merely a cynical political scare tactic.
"Philip Hammond is right to talk up the prospects of the British
economy in the years ahead, rather than irresponsibly talking them down as his
predecessor did in the run-up to the referendum.
"UKIP has always argued that the British economy will flourish
outside the EU – as we regain the power to agree our own free trade deals and
remove ourselves from future waves of Brussels red tape.
"Our relatively buoyant economy is an early sign that the
British people were right to disbelieve the merchants of doom.
"That the Chancellor now has some financial wiggle room due to
better than expected tax receipts and lower unemployment is reassuring in
advance of the Government’s negotiations to exit the EU.
"Mr Hammond is right not to spend this initial Brexit bonus. Our
national debt is alarmingly large and while the deficit is lower than previously
expected that debt is still growing.
"In fact the Government should be making significant savings
from bloated spending areas. UKIP for example would look to cut foreign aid
spending by £10 billion a year, scrap the wasteful HS2 project and rebalance the
Barnett Formula so resources reflect real needs.
"With some of those savings we could afford to remove VAT from
domestic energy, hot takeaway food and female sanitary products as soon as
Britain is out of the EU. We could also avoid clobbering the self-employed with
extra National Insurance as the Chancellor does today. We need to help hard-pressed people with the cost of living, not clobber
the self-employed."
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