This half-baked fiscal plan is not responsible

KWASI Kwarteng’s mini-budget is expensive even without a cut in income tax for the rich, but the question is how much the poor need to pay for it.

Benefits have been frozen for years and only raised three per cent last year.

We were promised a rise in benefits to match inflation rising towards 13 per cent, now it may only match the rise in workers’ pay because that would be fairer to workers.

But workers can’t get level with inflation because that would be inflationary (as the fat controller of the Bank of England put it), and the Government is doing its best to prevent disputes being resolved – the rail companies won’t sit down with the unions and the Royal College of Nursing is advising nurses for the first time to strike, because it has heard nothing from the health secretary.

Schoolteachers will soon be balloting too, but meanwhile we can expect yet more laws to make it virtually impossible to strike, and to promote strike-breaking in the national interest – just imagine how exciting life will be with all those rookie train drivers, nurses and teachers that the agencies are asked to provide.

Back at the cost of living crisis,

Liz Truss refused any plan to help insulate homes against the cold, and now she refuses any effort to tell us how to save energy.

That’s after she refused to tax the energy companies, so the Government is borrowing massively to pay for their vast windfall profits; now she thinks that advising people how to cut their use of energy, so the

Government needs to borrow less, is just “the nanny state”.

Perhaps someone could explain this to her – just try to keep it simple, please.

Laura Farris said (September 29) that Mr Kwarteng told her fiscal responsibility is a “key plank of his economic plan”, but his half-baked plan caused an immediate explosion in the money markets, the pound tanked and the Bank of England spent billions to rescue pension funds from collapse, while at home the mortgage markets have been in panic with prices doubled.

He made no attempt to show how the UK will reduce its debt, so the people we need to borrow from showed they don’t believe in the UK, interest rates have already risen and we’ll be paying more for rocketing energy prices.

His plan has nothing for businesses or even schools who are struggling to survive given only six months to cope with massive rises in energy costs.

And Mr Kwarteng has confirmed that public services face more cuts of up to £18bn a year.

“I think it’s a matter of good practice,” he said. Do you call that responsibility?

His big idea for growth is investment zones with low tax and low regulation which he calls targetting, all in the name of levelling up – but it’s the opposite, the game is beggar thy neighbour through smuggling and sucking the economic life out of surrounding areas.

If 100 per cent business rates relief is such a good idea for growth, give it to all businesses that are collapsing because of the cost particularly on our high streets.

ANDY WALLACE

Chandos Road

Newbury