Tax hypocrisy

Speaking on the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show, former Labour Party leader Lord Kinnock called for higher taxes – “The broadest backs bear the heaviest burden…we should have a top rate of 50 per cent, the unerring policy of the Labour Party.”

By The Newsroom

Published 11th Dec 2013, 00:00 BST

But for 12 out of the 13 years of Labour rule, the party was proud to have carried forward a 40 per cent rate: lower than under the Liberal/Conservative pact (45 per cent plus 2 per cent national insurance).

As for Lord Kinnock himself, while in the European Commission, he and his family earned a tax-light (if not untaxed) total of £775,000 in wages for Lady Kinnock, and £1.85 million for her husband, adding up to £2,625,000; allowances for Lady Kinnock’s staff and office costs of £2.9m; a £64,564 “entertainment allowance” for Lord Kinnock; a total of five publicly funded pensions, worth £4.4m, allowing them to retire on £183,000 a year; and a housing allowance that allowed them both to claim accommodation costs although, as a married couple, they lived in the same house in the Belgian capital between 1995 and 2004.

There should be a Nobel Prize for hypocrisy, for in this matter Britain has a strong contender!

Peter Smaill

Borthwick

Midlothian