Will Welby’s taxes really help the JAMs?

WHEN Theresa May came to power promising to help the Just About Managing, nobody applauded more loudly than the Mail. But sadly she has made little progress in matching action to her pledge.

True, unemployment is at a record low – a hugely impressive achievement. But wages have struggled to keep up with inflation, home ownership is an unattainable dream for most young families, and far too many hard workers can barely make ends meet.

Meanwhile, sharp disparities persist between the regions, and countless young people appear doomed to be worse off than their parents.

So yes, the Archbishop of Canterbury has a powerful point when he argues on Page 6 that for many, the economy is not working. But let the Mail be frank: whether the solutions Justin Welby proposes are the right ones is quite a different matter.

Undeniably, there is much to welcome in the report he has helped produce for a Left-leaning think-tank.

Take the finding that soaraway executive pay has contributed to a ‘deep sense of unfairness’ (though a balanced report might have highlighted that the gap between rich and poor has narrowed under the Tories).

He deserves praise, too, for attacking taxavoiding multinationals while small UK businesses pay their due.

As for the recommendation that web giants should be subject to strict regulation, this paper raises three hearty cheers.

But the truth is that many of the report’s remedies – such as major tax increases, a more ‘active and powerful state’, greater influence for the unions and a hefty rise in the minimum wage – read like a statist recipe for throwing millions out of work.

Others, including a £186billion ‘Citizens’ Wealth Fund’ to give every 25-year- old a ‘Universal Minimum Inheritance’, are surely pie-in-the-sky gimmicks.

And where is the fairness in a £9billion-ayear ‘lifetime gifts tax’ on cash that has already been taxed?

With the best will in the world, the Mail cautions against treating Mr Welby’s economic prescriptions as Gospel. But certainly he deserves credit for opening a national debate.