High Peak Liberal Democrats

Nick Clegg on the "utter nonsense" of Tory spending plans

In another strong demonstration of the differences between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives, Nick Clegg went on the Today programme yesterday (Monday) to talk about deficit reduction and fiscal policy in the next parliament. While the Tories want to reduce the deficit by cutting spending alone, Liberal Democrats want to raise taxes on the wealthy.

From the Guardian:

• Nick Clegg insisted taxes would have to rise in the next parliament. Speaking on Radio 4's Today programme, he said: "What the Conservatives are saying is a complete and utter nonsense. There is not a single developed economy anywhere in the world that has balanced the books and only done so on the backs of the working-age poor, which Osborne has now confirmed several times he wants to do."
• As he set out his party's plans to remove tax breaks for wealthy pensioners, Clegg also accepted that the public finances were not improving as fast as planned due to tax receipts failing to match forecasts, but he refused to say if this would require the coalition to put back its deficit plans.
• He said: "If tax receipts are not as buoyant as predicted then of course that has an effect. Time will tell if that is a semi-permanent effect or a temporary blip, but it means it comes down a little less than predicted."

There will have to be more austerity in the next Parliament, though:

• He added: "Some of the breathless rhetoric that suggests we will enter a new world where the level and scale of the cuts are going to be melodramatically much more than what we have done before I don't agree. The climb has become slightly deeper but not in a way that I would think is impossible to deliver."

And he went on to say that the Government had been pragmatic and altered its plans when the situation demanded it. That is for me one of the most important things that the Liberal Democrats brought to the table.

• This government has not been dogmatic about deficit-reduction plans. We have been firm, we have been consistent, but when it became obvious that the deficit was not going to be eliminated by the end of this parliament, far from doing what some people urged me to do - which was to chase our tail, cut even more - we said no, it is going to take a little longer, and it will be three years into the next parliament before we wipe the slate clean and balance the books for future generations.
• "No one would have thanked us if we had stuck dogmatically to the original timetable and implemented even more stringent cuts. We stuck to the pace which we think is economically socially and politically sensible. If this parliament has been all about rescuing the British economy, pulling the economy back from the brink, from the precipice, which is where we found it back in 2010, I think the next parliament and beyond is about renewing the British economy and making sure that all parts of the country can fairly benefit from the economic recovery as it takes root."

As a social liberal, though, I think that there is so much more that the state could and should be doing to reduce inequality and give everyone a fair crack of the whip. I have no problem with the idea of increasing taxes by some margin to improve public services, most specifically making sure that everyone has somewhere affordable and decent to live.

Scandinavia has shown us how you do that and we should look more to those countries for inspiration. Liberal Democrats have brought some very good things to the table in terms of job-creating capital investment, house-building and giving people more of their own money to spend. While our answers on reducing poverty and creating opportunity are going in the right direction, I think that they could and should be bolder and more radical.

* Caron Lindsay is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings

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