DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Don't hit the strivers who will power Brexit

By DAILY MAIL COMMENT

Published: | Updated:

Chancellor Philip Hammond is burdening small firms, savers and aspirational families with yet more taxes and red tape

Chancellor Philip Hammond is burdening small firms, savers and aspirational families with yet more taxes and red tape

Hallelujah!

Unelected Lords permitting, this week we should finally set sail for freedom from the statist, anti-democratic, inward-looking EU.

Yes, die-hard Remoaners in both houses will continue to resist the people’s will, with keen backing from the BBC and other Brussels-besotted media.

But with most accepting the popular verdict – and even arch-Europhile Lord Heseltine saying the Lords should not block the withdrawal process – all seems set fair for triggering formal negotiations.

So how deeply depressing that the Tories are squeezing the risk-taking, self-reliant, middle-class backbone of Britain – the very people who will lead our drive to compete in the wider world after Brexit.

Five days on, as the small print of the Budget comes under the microscope, details of the scale of the Treasury’s depredations are still coming to light.

Not only will the self-employed be hammered by the slashing of tax relief on dividends, higher National Insurance contributions and VAT bills – in blatant breach of the Tory manifesto – it now emerges that revenues from wealth taxes on middle-class savers will also double.

A triple whammy of increased receipts from inheritance tax, capital gains tax and a death tax, masquerading as probate fees, will push takings from these sources to a blistering £84billion.

What a reckless way to prepare for Brexit! 

Yes, this paper accepts the urgent need to control borrowing. But this should be done by cutting still-bloated spending in such wasteful areas as overseas aid (now set to increase still further as the economy grows).

Indeed, the last thing the Government should be doing is burdening small firms, savers and aspirational families with yet more taxes and red tape. We will not become fighting fit for Brexit by emulating the EU – and slaughtering the geese that lay the golden eggs.

 

Human life and the law

MUCH has changed in the half-century since abortion was legalised. For one thing, a law intended to cover only exceptional cases is now exploited as a routine alternative to contraception.

Indeed, 500 terminations are carried out in this country every day – while last week, this paper exposed how abortion provider Marie Stopes makes a mockery of the law by getting doctors to certify grounds for termination without seeing the patient.

At the same time, scientific advances mean babies born before the 24-week limit for most abortions have an increasing chance of leading healthy lives. In some English hospitals, as many as 70 per cent born at 23 weeks survive.

Yet this is the moment Labour’s Diana Johnson chooses to propose a law scrapping the criminal offence of abortion without medical approval – thus making it still easier to kill a viable human life.

Meanwhile, the BMA doctors’ union is consulting members on whether it too should press for decriminalisation.

Yes, the law needs reform. But the pressure from Ms Johnson’s backers and the BMA is in quite the wrong direction.

 

A criminals’ charter

Living illegally in Britain for 15 years, Iranian Hassan Massoum Ravandy committed a string of offences including burglary, handling stolen goods, criminal damage, possession of cocaine, disorderly behaviour, theft and affray.

Yet turning justice on its head, he has now been awarded £40,000 of law-abiding taxpayers’ money, after a court heard he had been unlawfully detained for 17 months while he awaited deportation.

Could there be any more powerful argument for the Tories to keep their ten-year-old pledge to scrap the hated Human Rights Act?

 

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