Earlier this week, David Cameron’s announcement of “a Bonfire of the Quangos” degenerated into chaos, as his shadow cabinet couldn’t deny that the Tories were promising to set up at least 17 new quangos.
Coming after his refusal to outline where he would make 10% cuts to public services, and his unfunded promise to give £200,000 of inheritance tax breaks to 3,000 of Britain’s richest estates, the truth about David Cameron gets clearer and clearer – the guy just doesn’t add up.
Now, we’re calling his bluff on another policy. Exactly two years ago today, the Conservative party’s social policy group published its report. It was a blueprint for future Conservative party policy, containing over £10bn of new spending ideas aimed, vaguely, at Britain’s social problems. Chaired by Ian Duncan Smith and run by his Centre for Social Justice think-tank, the group was tasked by David Cameron with coming up with Tory party policy proposals.
The two big pledges – fully endorsed by David Cameron – were marriage tax breaks and extra tax credits for couples. Between them, working with the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Iain Duncan Smith put a price tag of £6.2bn on these two policies – a price tag that David Cameron has never denied.
Yet nowhere did the report say where the money would come from. There were a couple of clues in the original report. The marriage tax breaks would be paid for with “green taxes”, apparently – but the trail quickly went cold. A thorough search was conducted but failed to find any details whatsoever about which taxes would go up and by how much. Recently, there have been media reports that the green taxes are being dropped, which would leave a gaping hole in the plans.
Clue number two was a statement that the extra tax credits for couples would supposedly be paid for by finding new jobs for 600,000 people on benefits. But this too turned out to be empty. There are no details as to how the Tories’ welfare proposals, (which incidentally are less tough than the government’s), could be expected to achieve such results over and above existing government targets.
Moreover, by proposing public spending cuts in the middle of a recession we could expect more unemployment and welfare bills to rise, not fall, if the Tories ever got into power.
The truth is that, for the last two years, David Cameron has left the British public waiting at the altar – promising to support marriage, but never committing to saying how he’d pay for it.