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Labour MP resigns over 10p


by Newswire    
April 17, 2008 at 8:19 pm

The Guardian reports:

A Labour MP is set to resign as a ministerial aide in protest at the government’s decision to scrap the 10p starting rate of income tax, it was reported tonight. Angela Smith, the MP for Sheffield Hillsborough and a parliamentary private secretary to the chief secretary to the Treasury, Yvette Cooper, is said to have told colleagues that she will quit her post because she cannot support the tax change.

Nick Clegg also goes in for the attack:

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, echoed Osborne’s attack.

“Gordon Brown’s government is starting to unravel before our eyes as Labour MPs see the full extent of the prime minister’s betrayal of the most needy in our society,” he said.

“But it is a pity that it has taken Angela Smith a full year to react to Gordon Brown’s callous decision when we warned the government of its consequences on the very day it was announced in the budget.”

Iain Dale think they’re like “cornered rats“.

But, taking a line different from many other lefty bloggers, Don Paskini recently said:

So how did the budget affect someone who, say, is 30 years old, working full time at the minimum wage, but is a single adult with no kids? Everyone’s criticising Gordon Brown for raising taxes on people in low paid work, so they’d be worse off, right?

Wrong.

If you take the income tax, national insurance and working tax credit changes into account, they’ll be £7.12/week better off.

But the figures do highlight the amount of misinformation that there has been in the coverage of this issue, with claims that all low paid workers will be losing out when that is manifestly not the case.


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Reader comments

Apparently Gordon Brown rang her and she’s changed her mind. Wonder how he managed that…?


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