Taxes aren’t a “burden” – they’re what pays for civilisation, says Dr Peter Daw
How depressingly predictable has been the reaction of the right-wing press and Conservative politicians to the first Labour Budget in 14 years. You would think from their comments that we lived in a fair society, with effective public services, not in one of the most grotesquely unequal countries in the developed world, blighted by child poverty, food banks and insecure employment, with scarcely functioning health and social services and a creaking transport infrastructure.
The new Government has made a very modest start towards redistribution of wealth by raising the minimum wage, making the benefit system slightly less punitive, establishing minimal workers’ rights and paying a long over-due wage rise to those delivering health and education services. This needs to be the beginning of a ten- year programme to make our society radically fairer. Yet listen to the howls of protest!
Such change requires those already wealthy enough to pay inheritance or capital gains tax, as well as larger employers, to make a greater contribution to the wider community. Tax is not, as it is so often called, ‘a burden’- it is rather a condition of living in a civilised society.
It is to be hoped that in all the talk, from all sides, of supporting ‘strivers’ we now have a government who value, alongside entrepreneurs, those who strive for public good by educating children, tending to the sick and elderly, working for a cleaner, greener environment or a richer cultural life for us all. This in contrast to advocating only for those who strive to make money for themselves and their chums, which was so characteristic of recent Conservative administrations.
Dr Peter Daw, Droitwich and Evesham Labour Party
Letter to The Droitwich Standard on The Budget – Nov 4th 2024