Budget ducks decisions, yet again

Last week's pre-election Budget was the final opportunity for this government to demonstrate that it has the courage and ideas to tackle the record collapse in the public finances which is its legacy. It abjectly ducked this last chance to redeem its reputation.

The most cynical example of the cowardice at the heart of the Government was the Chancellor's failure to even mention the most wide-ranging measure affecting each and every one of the 30 million taxpayers in this country: his freezing of personal allowances. You had to read through to page 130 of the vast Budget Red book to find it.

Yet this will raise £2.2 billion in the tax year beginning next week, more than all the other measures put together. It will cost each taxpayer a minimum of £150 or £3 a week.

Gordon Brown used to try to claim he was a 'prudent' steward of the nation's finances. But he has doubled the national debt since April 2005 and plans in the Budget to double it again in the next 5 years. Our children and their children will be paying this off in coming decades.

There were no new ideas - raising the Stamp Duty threshold for first time buyers to £250,000 was a Conservative policy. Labour of course introduced it as a pale imitation, limiting this change to two years only.

We can"t go on like this. Britain needs to encourage entreprise to stimulate growth and jobs. The Conservative initiative to cut Labour's planned jobs tax, through National Insurance increases, is a courageous move to get the economy moving.