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Millions will be hit by rising tax and National Insurance bills, say Tories
TORY REACTION Shadow Chancellor George Osborne tore into the Government's "giveaway" Pre-Budget Report, claiming millions of families would be hit by rising tax and National Insurance bills.
Mr Osborne said the state of the economy revealed Gordon Brown's claim to have abolished boom and bust as "one of the greatest deceits ever told to the British public".
He said the Chancellor's statement was "confirmation of the time-old truth – in the end all Labour chancellors run out of money and all Labour governments bring this country to the verge of bankruptcy".
He accused Mr Brown of playing politics with the timing of his benefits and the delay in implementing the tax rises.
It was wrong to blame the US for the recession, he said, because Mr Brown had mistaken a "boom for stability and never prepared Britain for the bust".
"The truth is the Prime Minister built our economic growth on the pillars of finance, housing and government spending and he never once stopped to think what would happen if the pillars collapsed," he said.
Mr Osborne went on: "If Denis Healey had had to announce these figures he wouldn't have turned round at the airport, he would have kept going."
This was a reference to the then Labour Chancellor being summoned back to the Labour conference from Heathrow Airport en route to a meeting with the International Monetary Fund during the crisis in 1976.
He asked Mr Darling: "Do you accept the national debt will now double to 1 trillion? Do you have an explanation to why Britain is forecast to have the worst recession of any major economy?
"Will you confirm that families will be worse off because the tax cuts you announced are temporary while the larger tax rises are permanent?"
He added: "The choice at the next election could not be clearer – a record borrowing binge and a lifetime of tax rises under Labour or fiscal sanity and lower taxes that last under the Conservatives."
Mr Darling responded: "You are right about one thing – there is a very clear choice before the country today.
"That is, this is a Government that is prepared to help people, to help businesses and an Opposition that is prepared to do absolutely nothing to help."
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Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 26 May 2012
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