Milking the prudent

ONE by one, the chickens let loose by George Osborne during his six years at the Treasury are coming home to roost.

By imposing swingeing taxes on second homes, he wrecked the buy-to-let market. His two-year delay in revaluing business rates greatly increased the shock for struggling firms.

Meanwhile, his hefty increases in stamp duty have all but frozen sales of the most expensive homes, with the perverse effect of reducing Treasury revenues.

But of all the former chancellor’s legacies, none has been more damaging than his punitive tax raid on insurance premiums, which has hit all responsible owners of houses, cars, pets and buildings.

And the pain is to get worse. First, Mr Osborne’s successor Philip Hammond signalled last autumn that the premium tax is to rise again in June – for the third time in two years – to a crippling 12 per cent, hoovering up £18billion of our cash over the next three years.

And now Justice Secretary Liz Truss, who looks increasingly out of her political depth, has rubber- stamped massive increases in compensation to accident victims, which will drive up car insurance premiums by hundreds of pounds.

Didn’t the Tories come to power on a pledge to stand by those who ‘do the right thing’? So why are they disincentivising people from doing the right thing by taking out insurance?