Leaders: Devil in the detail of Budget may return to haunt Tories

This was intended as a rebuke to the Gordon Brown era in which some nasty tax surprises only came to light several days later after detailed examination by accountancy experts. Much the same fate now seems to have befallen the coalition Chancellor. Many of the “good news” items in Wednesday’s Budget, including the lifting of the threshold for standard rate tax “taking more than two million out of tax” were well trailed before Wednesday, but not the so-called “granny tax” which dominated media coverage yesterday.

Nor did the Chancellor choose to make much of the lowering of the tax threshold for the higher 40 per cent tax rate from 2013-14 – a move which at once renders 300,000 more people liable. Now comes a critique from Britain’s leading independent think tank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which warns that changes in the tax regime will take the numbers of people paying the 40 per cent rate up from around 3.7 million currently to five million by 2014. The figure represents some 15 per cent of all taxpayers who will now be paying higher rate tax against just 3 per cent in 1978.

This second (or third) assessment of Mr Osborne’s Budget revealing some of its less appealing elements is likely to cast a shadow over the Scottish Conservative spring conference this weekend at Troon. HMRC admits they will see 330,000 Scots pensioners worse off by an average of £83 a year from next year, rising to 500,000 pensioners £220 a year worse off by 2016/17.

SNP MSP Chic Brodie lost no time in pointing out yesterday that the average age of the Scottish Conservative member is reckoned at around 70. Many stand to be hit by the “granny tax” measures while others still in work will find the tax burden is unlikely to be reduced by as much as Wednesday’s Budget declarations suggested. Morale in the party, hardly strong at present, is unlikely to be enhanced by a Budget package the fine print of which suggests that the measures will not quite work to their members’ advantage as they had thought.

Combined with ultra-low savings rates on deposit accounts and the effect of quantitative easing in bringing down annuity rates, there is a mood of rising dissatisfaction across a substantial element of Tory support which feels that the party no longer speaks for them. At the same time, the poll ratings for the new Scottish leader Ruth Davidson are not at all high.

The local government elections in early May could thus prove the catalyst for further upheaval in the party if few gains are made and the party retreats further. The full effect of the proposed withdrawal of higher tax allowances for pensioners is hotly disputed. But that the government made little attempt to explain it, still less sell its merits, has left it with some substantial catching up to do.

Something a bit sick about parliament stunt

It IS always good for politicians to meet real people, the citizens whose lives are directly affected by the policies they pursue. There is always a danger that the demands of high office result in our leaders becoming remote from the voters who they are there to serve, whether they live in Downing Street or Bute House.

To that extent it may have been salutary for Alex Salmond yesterday to come face to face with two pensioners who were left freezing overnight in a Scottish hospital because there were no blankets on their beds. The First Minister had initially dismissed their concerns as a “scare story”, but he later issued an apology after meeting them at Holyrood.

On the face of it another victory for people power over those in power, and a chastening experience for the Nationalists who have claimed to be the true guardians of the Bevanite principles of the National Health Service.

And yet there is something which causes unease about the events of yesterday. The pensioners turned up at parliament to hear their cases raised in the chamber by Johann Lamont during First Minister’s Questions only to be paraded by the Labour leader like exhibits in a party political broadcast. Their case may have been heard, they may have won an apology from the First Minister, but they were also being used by Ms Lamont and Labour.

There was something distasteful about this spectacle. Parliament should be the place where politicians answer to the people for their actions, but it should not become a circus, where politicians exploit ordinary people in crude stunts to gain a day’s cheap publicity.

Wordy online legal jargon just plain bard practice

To tick, or not to tick, that is the question we all face when we are asked if we have read the terms and conditions presented to us as we try to pay for an online purchase. The question is prompted by a Which? survey that found many T&Cs, as they are known, are longer than Shakespeare plays. PayPal’s T&Cs, for instance, are wordier than Hamlet.

The answer to the Shakespearean dilemma is, of course, that we always tick. If we do not, we suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in not being able to buy whatever it is we spotted on the world wide web. Yet we are unwise to do so as we are agreeing to what is in effect a contract which could be legally binding if, say, we have a complaint or want to get money back on something we have bought.

Commenting on its survey, a spokesman for Which? said that whether it was the “staggering word counts or complex legal jargon”, it is not fair to expect users to read through terms and conditions in full before agreeing to use a service.

Quite right. In other aspects of law there has been a move away from long, formal, language towards the use of simple terms which ordinary people can understand. The same should apply online. Unless, that is, these companies, wish to keep us in the dark? Ay, there’s the rub.