Try something new and help us build a fairer Britain, says Clegg

NICK Clegg urged voters to "try something new" yesterday as he outlined the Liberal Democrats' vision to make Britain fairer while saving £15bn a year from the public purse.

Promising a raft of tax measures to help low and middle-income earners, the Lib Dem leader said that backing his party on May 6 would "change our country for good".

He said his party's manifesto was built around one word – fairness – and its "four steps to a fairer Britain" were fair taxes, a fair chance for every child, a fair future and a fair deal.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Speaking at the document's launch in the City of London, Mr Clegg said: "I believe that every single person is extraordinary.

"But the tragedy is that we have a society where too many people never get to fulfil that extraordinary potential.

"My view, the liberal view, is that government's job is to help them do it."

He said the way to achieve that was to "take power away from those who hoard it, to challenge vested interests, to break down privilege, to clear out the bottlenecks in our society that block opportunity".

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Mr Clegg, who is seeking re-election in the Sheffield Hallam constituency, accused Labour and the Conservatives of "conspiring to airbrush the recession out of the election" before outlining what the party has described as "the most radical, far-reaching tax reforms in a generation".

The Lib Dems are promising to raise the National Insurance threshold to 10,000, putting an extra 700m into workers' pockets.

The move would cost almost 17bn, but the party says it would be paid for by raising Capital Gains Tax, cutting pensions relief for high earners, increasing taxes on flights and introducing a "mansion tax" on homes worth more than 2m.

Other pledges include economic and electoral reform, a 2.5bn pupil premium for the poorest children and a pay rise for the lowest-ranking members of the Armed Forces.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Mr Clegg said that the proposals were properly costed and claimed that Labour and the Tories were treating the electorate like fools by "imagining that manifestos barely fit for a time of plenty are good enough for a time when money is tight".

He added: "Our manifesto recognises the world has changed. There isn't spare money to splash around, we can no longer rely on the City to pay our bills. People have got to be levelled with. It is wrong to promise something for nothing.

"It is only because we are willing to make difficult decisions, to find cuts in some areas, that we can make the commitments in this manifesto in other areas."

Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said that his party would hold an emergency budget by the end of June and a comprehensive spending review in the autumn to identify how the UK's 167bn deficit could be at least halved by 2013-14.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

But the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, said that Mr Cable's tax proposals had come from "fantasy land" and would penalise middle-income earners.

"It's quite obvious that the Liberal Democrat figures don't add up," Mr Darling said. "It would involve clobbering a lot of people in middle incomes who would be hit in their incomes, and some of the sources of their funding is just fantasy land.

"It's all very well to make promises. I think in the current age, when people are pretty cynical and questioning, they're bound to say: 'Come on, at a time like this, how can you afford all that?'

"What people want is a sensible assessment of where we are. We are coming through this because of the measures that I've introduced over the last 18 months or so that are now bearing fruit."

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The Lib Dems have not matched the Tory pledge to scrap Labour plans for a one per cent increase in National Insurance in 2011, but will reverse it "when resources allow".

Tory leader David Cameron welcomed "the fact that people are moving towards our position."