Very interesting fringe meeting last night on the Case for Lower Taxes. During the Q&A, someone “closely associated with” the Forsyth Tax Commission more or less confirmed they were recommending £19.5bn of tax cuts.
He also said the Commission did not accept such cuts would conflict with economic stability. They are easily affordable, even without counting the offsetting revenue growth tax cuts almost always generate, or the longer-term dynamic effects of lower taxes on economic growth.
As we blogged yesterday - and this week’s debates have put it up in seafront lights - the supposed conflict between tax cuts and stability is not an economic point. It is entirely political. Our top team fears that by arguing the economic truth, they would risk being portrayed as taking Britain back to boom and bust economics. It’s a sad commentary on our political process.
Two other interesting fringe events. First, Reform’s session with Andrew Lansley on the NHS, where Andrew gave a very clear presentation of the Party’s health reform agenda. Unfortunately, it is exactly the same agenda that Labour is so unsuccessfully pursuing already – tax-funded, free-at-the-point-of-use, centrally rationed treatments (NICE), commissioning “gatekeeper” GPs, and payment by results for hospitals.
Never mind all those fabled policy reviews: we’ve already ruled out the most exciting innovative ideas that could make a real difference. No competing social insurers, no co-payment, no putting the money in the hands of consumers. Apparently, to persuade voters “the NHS is safe in our hands” we have to avoid promising the only solutions that would actually work. There’ll be more of the same in David Cameron’s final speech this afternoon.
It’s pretty much the same in education. At yesterday’s lively Bow Group fringe, the splendid Chris Woodhead went up against David Willetts. With a lifetime of experience in education, Woodhead persuasively argued the case for giving the power to parents rather than politicians and bureaucrats, and giving ordinary state school parents the same rights enjoyed by rich parents in the independent sector. In other words, school vouchers.
But Willetts is not going to deliver anything like that. Confessing he’d once been “mesmerised” by vouchers, he’s now talking a very different language, the language of political control over not just the curriculum, but also school organisation (e.g. the vogue for synthetic phonics, and streaming). What’s the difference from Labour’s policies? None, other than “well, we’ll jolly well do this stuff, whereas they just talk about it”. Hmmm.
Do we really want an education system where the only choice most parents have is at the ballot box, between competing management teams offering virtually indistinguishable top-down policies?
PS Thanks to our esteemed Editor, Tyler nearly got famous this morning with a slot on the Today programme - I got my hair done and everything. Sadly, I was “stood down”: they must have taken a look at my telly tax rants on Burning Our Money and added me to their dangerous nutter list. Ah well.