Tax and Waste

Following the trashing of the British economy by the Conservative government under Liz Truss, Sunak's Conservative government has restored some stability by reversing its positions on most of the formerly brilliant ideas that were meant to be good for us. Much of the damage has been done, and will be with us for years, especially if you have a mortgage. To get more blood out of stone, the government has followed the typical Labour trick by failing to raise tax levels in line with inflation. More poorer people will be caught in the tax net, and we will pay even more tax. We are paying the price for the incompetence of the Conservative government. There are options to avoid lumbering us with additional tax. The first was to retain the tax regime on banks. Thatcher applied a windfall tax on banks as rising inflation rates significantly increase their profits. The Conservatives have rejected this. The second was a proper windfall tax on the gas and oil companies which has been botched by Sunak. The third is to cut waste. When Sunak was chancellor, billions were wasted much of it through fraud. Little effort appears to be made to recover it. The Conservative government spent more than £4 billion on PPE, much going to Conservative party donors. Of that PPE, £2.6 billion was unsuitable, £670 million defective and £750 million surplus to requirements. £431 million was paid in fines for leaving mountains of PPE for too long in storage and £35 million for destruction of PPE that cannot be used. To add to this, the Conservative government handed out nearly £10 billion to likely fraudsters in Covid support schemes after taking few steps to protect us taxpayers. The message is clear, the Conservatives are financially incompetent.