Tory tax blunders

SIR – There are two large question marks against the reasons Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, gave for raising taxes. These are quite apart from the fact that he promised not to at the last election.

First, there is no recognition that the consequences of bad decisions by ministers should not be dumped on innocent taxpayers. Examples include £37 billion on a failed Covid testing programme, and failed socialist energy policies which require consumers to fund what are shareholder risks. Is there a mechanism to claw back from the operators of wind farms the £11 billion per annum taxpayers are currently paying them?

Secondly, it has taken barely any time at all for Mr Sunak to fall victim to the dead hand of the Treasury. Like him or loathe him, one of the most compelling reasons for voting Conservative in 2019 was that Dominic Cummings had a clear plan to overhaul state institutions.

The Home Office should be broken up. The NHS is a sprawling, out-ofcontrol Soviet mess, despite the skills of its medical staff. We love culture, media and sport, but government should stay away. Why has the Cabinet Office not ordered all public servants to get back to the office, full time?

We need a government with a fundamentally higher level of competence, vision and sense of duty to the country. If not, this current weak administration will continue to allow an entrenched public sector to tax us all ragged. There is no better example than the 55 per cent wealth tax on private pensions, while there is none on public-sector ones.

Robin Hallam

Andover, Hampshire