29th April 2001 - TAX rises imposed by Labour over the past four years mean that people are having to work the equivalent of an extra two weeks to pay them, Michael Portillo, the Conservative Treasury spokesman, said yesterday.

Tax Freedom Day - the day when people stop working to pay taxes and instead start working for themselves - has moved from May 27 in 1997, the year the Tories lost power, to June 10 this year. In the Commons last week, under pressure from William Hague, Tony Blair said it was "true" that tax revenues had risen over the first part of this Parliament. Mr Portillo said Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, had embarked on a path of higher public spending that meant taxes would have to go up.

The Government was now spending £12,000 of taxpayers' money every second. Under Labour the tax burden had risen by £28 billion, the equivalent of 10p on the basic rate of income tax.

Mr Portillo said Labour promised a "revolution" in the quality and delivery of public services and said that it had "no plans to increase taxes at all". He added: "They have broken both promises. Taxes have gone up but services have not improved. Under Labour people are paying more and getting less." Labour had taxed the poorest hardest. Under Labour, the poorest fifth of households had to pay more than 41 per cent of their income in tax, the highest figure since records began. In 1997, the figure was 37 per cent. Mr Portillo pledged that an incoming Conservative government would cut taxes by £8 billion within three years. It would abolish taxes on savings, take one million pensioners out of tax altogether, reduce taxes for families and cut the duty on fuel. Stephen Byers, the Trade and Industry Secretary, gave a strong hint yesterday that Labour would go into the election repeating its 1997 promise not to increase the basic or higher rates of tax.

He told GMTV's Sunday Programme that Mr Brown would be able to fulfil promised increases in spending on public services even if there was a slight slowing in economic growth. He said: "We can do that because of the economic success that we have seen." Mr Byers added that he and Alan Milburn, the Health Secretary, would be making announcements this week about improvements to maternity pay and leave.

COMMENT:

During the past century there has been an unprecedented interference by government in everyday life, with the creation of structures and attitudes that were not dismantled with the passing of the total wars that justified them. The socialist assumption that people should be "looked after" from cradle to grave so penetrated the body politic that many are now incapable of seeing state welfare as merely one of the roles of government, albeit an important one. They think it is what government is for. The pre-Budget revelation that we are taxed so much more than necessary that the Government had a £40 billion budget surplus provoked no riots. Downing Street was not stormed because nearly 40p out of every pound is taken in tax (perhaps as much as 53p gross), which means that, in a working year, you now toil until early June for them.

Because of the culture of shoulder-shrugging resignation in the UK - governments do what they like, there's nothing we can do about it, they're all the same anyway etc. And so Tony Blair's pre-election pledge - "We have no plans to increase tax at all" -is not thrown back at him in every interview, as it should be. After all, his government averaged about one tax increase every month in its first three years, and has been pretty close to that since. But there is another reason for our meekness in the face of the tax gatherers. The expansion of state welfare has created three large groups of citizens, only one of which has any serious interest in halting or reversing the process.

First, there are welfare dependants who receive more in state benefits than they contribute in taxation. Second, there are those who, though taxpayers, make their living either from administering and encouraging welfare provision or from being servants of the state or local authorities - teachers, NHS staff and the various kinds of civil servant. Third, there are non-state funded taxpayers, both individuals and businesses. These are the milch-cows that keep the whole thing going but their ability to do so declines as state provision increases. Yet they have no more say over how money seized from them under threat of criminal sanction is spent than do those upon whom it is spent.

If Labour and its Liberal lackeys win this election, we shall all pay more tax and the state's share of our income will grow.