PC 12: Shadow Budget(s)

[Brown]

I am distressed to see the Tory Shadow Budget would privatize the Royal Mail, a line that even Thatcher herself did not cross during her tenure. While Thatcher and I have a myriad of disagreements, we do agree on one critical point: The Queen's head should not be privatized. It is unfortunate to see the Monday Club, yet again, exerting its extreme influence over the Tories, seeking to auction off the Royal Mail to the highest bidders and remove an institution that has remained in public control since established by King Henry VIII in 1516. While the Conservative party may be willing to throw away five centuries of tradition, the Labour party will never allow the face of our Most Gracious Sovereign to be replaced by a corporate logo.

[Clarice Ashbridge]

I am incredibly proud of the work put into our alternative vision for the budget, and the future of the United Kingdom, by my great friend the Shadow Chancellor. This budget is a statement of intent from the Conservatives: we believe that government has no right to hoard the surplus that working people have created, and that we should hand as much of it as we can back to the people who made it. By abolishing the starter rate of tax, ending Labour's tax penalty on families and slashing taxes and regulations across the board, it is undeniable that the country would be much better off under the Conservatives.

I am particularly proud of our vision for Home Office funding, where we outspend the Government by a large margin in real terms. But, we won't just over-fund and under-target - the investments we make will be real and tangible. A Conservative government will hire 2,500 additional police next year, as part of a long term plan focusing on bolstering police in rural and small towns, leveling up police forces across the country and meaning that no area of the country will be left behind. We will boost funding for immigration enforcement, to be spent on a new Border Control Agency with expanded powers and remit, with a higher level of funding than currently is available. Despite the claims of the Home Secretary, we're committed to rehabilitation, but instead of engaging in a spending splurge, we will invest a larger amount over the term of one parliament, focusing particularly on rehabilitating young offenders. Contrary to Labour's stingy plans, you can have it all: well funded public services, without stealth taxes and hoarding the public's money.

[Rebecca Flair]

For a party committed to cutting taxes so much the Tories seem to be awfully bad at it. A 1% cut to Income Tax won't cut it when people are still paying 10% on income over £4,000, a cut to Capital Gains Tax won't cut it when most of the population will never pay any in their lives, and a 1% cut to Corporation Tax won't cut it when compared to Liberal Democrat plans businesses are still paying an extra 2.5% on VAT. The Conservative Party are all talk and no trousers when it comes to tax cuts, for a real tax cutting agenda for the people look no further than the Liberal Democrats.

[Amelia Lockhart]

In his campaign to be leader of the Conservative Party, William Croft committed to “a serious injection of investment in all forms of infrastructure”, including in roads and rail. The Shadow Budget was Mr Croft’s and his Shadow Chancellor’s attempt to make good on this promise: they’ve failed to do so and, in doing so, broken their promise. The Conservative Party would freeze in real terms investment in infrastructure, while Labour would invest over £40 million in our roads and £200 million in our railways. We recognise that infrastructure investment is a critical part of creating a prosperous economy for the future, even if the Conservative Party does not.

With a failure to announce investment in green energy and now a failure to commit to investing in our transport infrastructure, we must ask ourselves: if Mr Croft breaks a promise to his own party, his own MPs, and his own members, how can the British public ever trust him to implement any promise he makes with them?

[Rebecca Flair]

I am exceedingly disappointed to see the Conservative Party, and Calamity Croft in particular, ditch their commitment to green initiatives by reducing pollution taxes, starving green causes of funding, and rejecting the chance to put any funding into our rural and suburban areas. The Conservative Party are clearly so beholden to the Thatcherite fringe that they got so obsessed with cutting taxes on their investor mates and forgot all about helping our communities, protecting our planet, or even their own past promises.

[Rebecca Flair]

Last night on the television Calamity Croft pledged a budget surplus of more than £10bn, that was a cast iron guarantee he made live before the people of this nation, today his Shadow Chancellor unveiled a Shadow Budget with a surplus of a meagre £3bn. Now I am no believer in obscenely large surpluses for the sake of a surplus as the country knows but how are the people of this nation supposed to take the Conservative Party at their word when the Leader promises one thing and then the very next day his Shadow Chancellor drives a wrecking ball through it? There are many more broken promises in this Budget: Croft's pledge to go green, broken. Croft's pledge to invest in infrastructure, broken. Croft's pledge to invest in rural areas, broken. Everywhere you look in this Shadow Budget it is broken promise after broken promise, no wonder the public don't trust Calamity Croft and his terrible Tories.

[Will Frost]

Responding to comments made by the Deputy Prime Minister about the Shadow Budget.

Well you know I'm glad the Deputy Prime Minister is paying close attention to the Shadow Budget, she could learn a lot from the example the Conservatives have set about returning money to the British people and unleashing the full potential of the free market. With this budget we are providing a massive injection of cash and opportunity right into the heart of the British economy, the impact of which will be higher wealth creation that enables us to make even greater investments in infrastructure, green energy, and the future of this country. It's true New Labour fashion to present a budget that makes incremental changes at most, and then try to suggest that by us not accomplishing every single thing I campaigned for in one go that we're some how U-turning our commitments. I'm not going to take any lessons about commitment from a Government that promised to honor the Strategic Defense Review, and then didn't even come close.

Policy making isn't an all-or-nothing ordeal. I've made it clear that my approach to politics, the Right Way Forward, is about taking power away from Westminster and returning it to the British people where it rightly belongs. The Shadow Budget does that on an epic scale, and I could not be prouder of my friend Nicky Mountstuart's incredible package of tax cuts, public spending commitments, and overdue reforms.

[Rebecca Flair]

Every step of the way, when the economy is growing relatively decently, the Conservative Party have chosen to freeze or u-turn seemingly on a whim. Take the Education budget as an example. Seemingly on a whim Mr Mountstuart has decided to copy line for line the Labour Party's building plans for new schools, but he has managed to get it catastrophically wrong in a way that would endanger our children's very futures. The Conservative Party would build 147 new primary schools and give them precisely no money to maintain themselves because they have frozen all the maintenance budgets. The same rings true for their 42 new secondary schools. The Conservative Party's education policies wouldn't just fail our students, it would be actively damaging to them exposing our next generation to dilapidated and potentially unsafe conditions because the schools they built just weren't maintained once the cameras left.

[Rebecca Flair]

Let's talk about localism, let's talk about rural voices, and let's talk about the Budgets because here's the kicker, this Shadow Budget shows how little the Tories have to say about any of it. The Tories have decided that a 3p cut to Fuel Duty is enough support for local and rural areas so they decided to call it a day and move on. That is to say nothing about the broken green promises, the broken infrastructure promise, and the broken promise to cut alcohol duties supposedly to support our rural pubs. Contrast this with the Liberal Democrat vision for our local and rural voices. We have invested £9bn in a VAT cut making the vast majority of goods a fair bit cheaper, we have invested £1.4bn into infrastructure projects including £850mn to reopen 50 Beeching Cut stations in rural areas across the country, we have invested £200mn into countryside renovation and reforesting, and we have invested £4.65bn into local and devolved governments including £1bn for my native Scotland which Mr Mountstuart seems to care so much about. The Tory response to all that investment? Freezes across the board, not a single penny extra in real terms for the countryside, not a single penny extra in real terms for the devolved governments, and not a single penny extra in real terms for our countryside's crumbling infrastructure. The Conservative Party are taking our rural communities for granted and are every bit as guilty as the Labour Party for neglect of our green spaces, rural villages, and country roads.

[Will Frost]

At it's core, the Conservative Shadow Budget is about three things: allowing you to keep more of the money you earn, proving our commitment to fund the public services you rely on, and hiring more police officers to keep your community safe. The Shadow Chancellor and I wanted to use this budget to prove that it was possible to give the British people back more of their own money, while also properly funding our incredible NHS, our schools, and our nation's police. We've been able to do just that, and in doing so have proven to the British people that a credible alternative to New Labour's strategy of overregulation and tax by stealth does indeed exist. Cutting your taxes, funding our social services, and bolstering the police should be the foundation of any budget proposal. And for the Conservative Party, they are.

When I became the leader of the Conservative Party, I promised to lead a compassionate conservative movement that was rooted in the values of personal freedom, law and order, and individual aspiration. The Shadow Budget released by Mr. Mountstuart is the manifestation of those values, and shows what the Right Way Forward looks like in practice.