Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as
to be purchased at the price of
chains and slavery?

The TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) shows that the average family pays £656,000 in tax over their lifetime.

After years of the state overspending and misusing our money we now have a greater idea of how far this legacy cripples the finances of British families. The TPA’s latest research shows the total amount of direct and indirect tax that households will pay over their working lifetimes and in retirement. Based on the current level of taxes applying over a working lifetime of 40 years and 15 years of retirement the key findings of their research are:

• The average household will pay over their lifetime a total of £250,000 in Income Tax and £101,000 in VAT;
• Poorest households are hit hardest by VAT and Council Tax. A household in the lowest quintile pays £57,000 in VAT and £55,000 in Council Tax over a lifetime;
• An average household in the lowest income quintile will pay £235,000 in direct and indirect taxes;
• An average household in the second income quintile will pay over £392,000 in direct and indirect taxes;
• An average household in the third income quintile will pay over £556,000 in direct and indirect taxes;
• An average household in the fourth income quintile will pay over £755,000 in direct and indirect taxes; and
• The four most burdensome individual taxes over a lifetime are Income Tax, VAT, employee National Insurance contributions and Council Tax.

Matthew Sinclair, Director TaxPayers’ Alliance said:

Households in the UK now pay an incredible amount in tax over a lifetime, handing over a hefty slice of their income. The VAT hike has added to the cost of living and many taxpayers are really feeling the pinch with little prospect of improvement on the horizon. The Chancellor needs to deliver a tax cut in the Budget, to ease the burden and help the economy to grow. Simpler, fairer taxes can decrease the lifetime tax bill for households and leave everyone with more of their own money, so they can decide how to spend it. 

When the poor are hit so heavily through taxation it is impossible to view current levels of taxation as fair and just. That is why we need lower, simpler taxes.

Last year, the Government delivered the biggest single increase of personal allowances in income tax history. The amount that can be earned before income tax rose from £6,475 to £7,475 in April 2011, which took 880,000 people out of the income tax system altogether. This year, the Government plans to increase it to £8,105. However, we need to go further.

I repeat the call that I made recently in correspondence with constituents:

For far too long, Governments have got away with making promises which could only be funded by excessively high taxes, immoral borrowing and damaging inflation. No other organisation would be allowed to get away with it and neither should government. More than that, I want to see lower taxes across the board. As a Conservative, I believe that less government, less tax, more freedom and more responsibility are elements of the right recipe to create a better society for everyone. I want radical change.

Outside Wycombe Hospital

A crucial public consultation on the future of Wycombe Hospital began on 16 January. It is being run by Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs Wycombe Hospital. This is our chance to have our say on proposals to change how NHS services are provided in High Wycombe.

The exercise runs until 16 April and there are consultation meetings scheduled throughout the area every week in February. I urge everyone who cares about the future of our hospital to take part.

Click here for an explanation of the proposed changes and the schedule of public consultation meetings you can attend.

Ever since I was first selected  as the Conservative candidate for Wycombe, I have been working hard with local supporters of Wycombe Hospital. We are all keen to see services in the hands of the community and removed from further creeping centralisation and losses of service provision. So I welcome the Government’s intent in these current health reforms, which aim to move all NHS Trusts to NHS Foundation Trust status by April 2014 and to pass responsibility for purchasing patient care from Primary Care Trusts to the newly formed GP consortia a year before that.

This is a continuation of Labour Policy under the Blair government. NHS Foundation Trusts were introduced by Labour in the 2003 Health and Social Care Act as legally independent public benefit corporations. They are: 

• Authorised and regulated by an independent regulator, known as Monitor;
• Accountable to their local communities through a system of local ownership with members and elected governors – the governors being elected by the members;
• Not required to break even each year although they must be financially viable. They can borrow money within limits set by the regulator, retain surpluses and decide on service development for their local populations;
• Free from central government control and strategic health authority performance management; and
• Required to lay their annual reports and accounts before Parliament each year.

There was a move to switch to Foundation status in Bucks during 2008 that was unsuccessful due to financial constraints. This initiative will be revived and a new submission is to be made in September 2012. I would encourage members of the public to support this move to Foundation status so that local people, as members and governors, can have much more direct control over Buckinghamshire hospitals.

My concerns are that Foundation Trusts may become too large and controlled from remote centres. That would be the opposite of both the Government’s vision and my own of a devolved and cooperative local arrangement. We need to avoid the bureaucracy and lack of accountability which has plagued the NHS locally for so long.

In the meantime, I again urge everyone interested in future of health provision in Wycombe to join in the consultation process. NHS consultations are currently how local voices are heard and I think it vital that hundreds of local people take part.

Last week saw the Parliamentary launch of the Home Heat Helpline  (0800 33 66 99). It is a free, not-for-profit advice service to help people who are struggling to pay their energy bills and stay warm this Christmas. In October 2006, the Helpline was initially launched by the Energy Retail Association (ERA) which is the trade association of the major UK energy companies.

The latest Helpline report shows that 3.5 million, or one in ten, households are eligible for some form of assistance, which works out as an average of £250 for each household. The Helpline have kindly provided data for the Wycombe area that shows 4,600 households are eligible which works out as 11% of the total. The help offered is not reserved for the elderly as many assume. It is available for families with young children, people with disabilities and long term health conditions.

At a time when energy prices are rapidly increasing and Parliament has recently debated on this topical issue, this service could be a welcome addition for families across the UK.

Last week, the Localism Bill was passed into law. I was glad to support its passage.  Through 13 years of New Labour, we witnessed continual moves towards centralised planning and micro-managing of our everyday lives. This new law will see central government interference cut and give power back to citizens, community groups and local councils.

To accompany the Act, the Government have helpfully updated the ‘plain English guide’ that was produced to accompany the Bill. You can read it here.

For councils this will mean: 

• Clarification of the rules on predetermination in order to free up councillors to express their opinions on issues of local importance without the fear of legal challenge;
• Abolition of Labour’s discredited Standards Board regime;
• Greater control over business rates.  Councils will have the power to offer local business rate discounts, which could help attract firms, investment and jobs;
• Cancellation of Labour’s unfair ‘ports tax’, which threatened to cripple key businesses, it simplifies the process for claiming small business rate relief to help small shops and small firms; and
• New planning enforcement rules, giving councils the ability to take action against people who deliberately conceal unauthorised development.

For local communities it will grant:

• The Right to Bid to run local services;
• The Right to Challenge by putting forward ideas to help their community;
• The Right to Veto excess council tax rises;
• The opportunity to draw up Neighbourhood plans;

However, there are caveats. I am an advocate of local referenda so I was disappointed to see that the Lords removed the flagship ‘local referendum’ provision from the Bill. That would have allowed voters to launch local referenda on local issues. Referenda do remain for council tax, right-to-build and neighborhood planning, but I know this will be a disappointment to some people in Wycombe.

Neighbourhood plans must, understandably, work inside some limits. If major infrastructure is decided upon at a national level, such as this benighted high-speed rail line, or if a strategic local plan calls for a certain number of homes to be built, then the Localism Act has safeguards to ensure neighbourhood plans do not override these wider ranging policies. Again, this will be a disappointment.

Nevertheless, I hope that the Localism Act will live up to its initial goal of radically decentralising power and fostering an environment where communities will have a greater say in their local area. We will see…

NB: this post is by Tim Hewish, my Parliamentary Researcher, and the views expressed are his own.

I recently attended the E. G. West Memorial Lecture delivered by Professor James Tooley and sponsored by the IEA on the topic of for-profit schooling.

He noted that the word profit is highly politicised and many would not wish to even countenance the notion that profit-making should be implemented in schools.  Professor Tooley prefers the term freedom in education because when we discuss freedom of association we do not object to people making a profit when they meet freely in social co-operation. Therefore, why not in education?

Universal access is a strong label to argue against; however, he objects to the term compulsory education as you cannot compel someone to learn, you merely give them the opportunity. If you look at the number of truancies in the UK this bears out.

Tooley, first through historiography then secondly through present day international examples explains how for-profit education has been successful for the UK and the third world’s poor.

He shows that in 1861 only 4.5% of school children were not in school and the Education Act 1870 was brought in to address this deficit. However, the more the State moved into education it reduced the number of thriving private schools. Parents paid about 7 or 8 pence per week which was possible to pay for but when greater taxation came in and schools were offered cheaper options some even for free, this undercut the existing self-sustaining schools.

Internationally, his work in Africa, India and China shows how for-profit schooling is thriving in these regions. In Nigeria 41% of schools are recognised private, 33% unrecognised and only 26% Government funded. While in Delhi, private schools for the poor are outperforming state run institutions. More evidence can be found by reading his work the Beautiful Tree.

Putting examples to one side, the enduring Left/Right divide is about process. We both want the same basic ends: freedom and prosperity which is both fair and universal, but those on the Right focus less on motives and more in outcomes, the Left visa versa.

For conservatives, the profit motive is reconciled under the aim of results. These for-profit schools are benefitting the world’s poorest without State intervention. It is giving them a better chance in life. The Left will always struggle with this.

In addition, the Left are making the assumption that the State is without motive. Many politicians are driven by the vote motive, likewise civil servants the power motive. They are not devoid of pressure which is not altogether altruistic. We are not angels.

Currently in state education, the allocation of resources are not left to the market place of ideas which are then tested against others. They are left to politicians and civil servants. You could even argue that for-profit schools have more incentives to succeed because the failure would mean closure harming all concerned, whereas state funded schools can continue unharmed, propped up by tax payer money.

The arguments that for-profit schools would leave some pupils at the bottom as they are not ‘profitable’ are disingenuous because after over a 100 years of state schooling and each child receiving  12 years of compulsory education 22% of pupils leave innumerate and 17% illiterate. The Evening Standard’s campaign to highlight the literacy crisis in London supports this position.

Also pupils are left behind under the current state system. Sink schools leave economically poor but bright pupils in a system of mediocrity.

Furthermore, schools today are often oversubscribed and are simply not being built. As the report from the Adam Smith Institute shows: 15.4% of parents nationally did not secure a place at their first choice preference in 2011 and one in ten pupils are now educated in schools that have exceeded their capacity with pupil numbers projected to raise by 8% by 2014-14.

Put simply: There is a frustrated demand and an inadequate supply in the schools market. To be denied the freedom to set up a school for-profit is damaging to the success of pupils from all backgrounds.

Therefore, to allow Free Schools to be run for-profit isn’t something that should be taken off the policy table. In Sweden, 63% of their free schools are run by joint-stock companies and new applications come almost entirely from for-profit organisations.

I can sense it is one half of the Coalition dragging their ideological heels as the for-profit label is too much to stomach. Yet they should look deep into their foundations as a party of Freedom and listen to their founding father:

I confess I think these Resolutions are conceived in a spirit adverse to that national character. They have a tendency in utter contrariety to it. They tend to encourage a dependence which is alien and foreign to the minds of Englishmen—to substitute that which is mechanical, technical, and formal for that which is free, open, elastic, and expansive

…

The element of the freedom in which we move and breathe and have our being is essential to the development of the English character, and, if you take it away, you pine and starve that character, and any substitute you can give in the form of Education Returns is utterly worse than worthless.