Tax cuts are both necessary and overdue as the tax burden is the highest in a long time - Yorkshire Post Letters

With respect to David Blunkett, elections are necessarily and unavoidably "nasty" affairs, because parties have to get into office, even if power proves illusory, in order to get anything done.

He appears to fear the Chancellor making "irresponsible" cuts in Income Tax and Inheritance Tax.

Courting popularity aside, tax cuts are both necessary and overdue. Currently the tax burden is the highest it's been since the end of World War II. This makes life harder than it needs to be during a cost of living crisis and it also hampers economic growth.

Thanks to the freeze in personal allowances imposed by the present government, increasing numbers of people have been drawn into paying Income Tax at the bottom and more people have ended up paying the higher rate when their earnings get past the median.

If allowances were raised all round, that would put more money directly into people's pockets which they would then spend on VATable and dutiable products amongst other things. That in turn would increase the tax take as well as generating jobs and new taxpayers.

Something desperately needs to be done with Inheritance Tax. It is often claimed that it's only paid by four to five per cent of the population and is one of the most hated taxes there is.

I'm willing to be corrected, but I understand it only raises about £3bn a year as opposed to the £40bn so far raised by fiscal drag as a result of the freeze on personal allowances.

If those claims are true, surely they constitute the best recruiting sergeant for its abolition, which would bring us into line with most developed countries, or at least a significant increase in the threshold at which it becomes payable.

At some point within the next 12 months voters will be faced with a choice between a reasonably competent Conservative Government or a Labour one with Robin Hood tax policies, intent on sowing division and setting rich against poor. I know which of the two I would prefer.