Brown's Budget Dodges The Big Issues

2.00.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Wed 22nd Mar 2006

Commenting on Gordon brown's budget, Lembit Öpik, MP for Montgomeryshire and Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, said today: "Brown's budget doesn't tackle the biggest problems: soaring personal debt, unfair taxation, and our unsustainable pensions system.

"The Chancellor does deserve credit for continued economic stability economy and his ongoing investment in schools. But that economic stability is dependent on a fundamentally unstable personal debt mountain which threatens to unbalance the whole economy. The British public now pay £1 million every ten minutes in interest on personal debt. This budget ignores that fact.

"On taxation, the Chancellor tinkers when we need radical reform. The wealthiest 1% of society own a quarter of all the UK's assets - more than in 1997 when Labour came to power! Meanwhile, half the population own 6% of our assets - less than 1997. So under Labour the UK has become more unequal than it was under the Tories!

"Worse still, the richest people in Britain pay a smaller proportion of income in tax than the poorest. And instead of scrapping the grossly unfair Council Tax and replacing it with a fairer Local Income Tax, we get more increasingly complex and confusing tax credits.

"Brown hasn't even tried to fix the old fashioned way money is allocated to Wales - the Barnett formula - a system so outdated and unfair that even its inventor, Lord Barnett says it should be scrapped.

"As for pensions, Gordon Brown is marching us towards a precipice, like a sleep-walker mumbling 'means-testing, means-testing'… The Turner report published before Christmas was meant to be a wake-up call, but Brown has slept through the alarm. We're facing a pensions crisis. Lord Turner offered a blueprint for a sustainable pensions system. But Brown won't listen and won't act. He is fiddling while our future burns.

"On the environment we welcome the money that Brown's putting towards micro-generation of energy, and the other minor initiatives. But there's not much action on environmental tax. Ultimately this is a Brown budget, not a green one.

"And as for health: the Chancellor's answer to the NHS's cash crisis is not to mention it. Ostrich thinking won't make the problem go away- instead of sticking his head in the sand the Chancellor needs to take a long hard look at NHS deficits.

"A Lib Dem budget would face the problems of inequality, pensions and personal debt. And we'd build the environment into the heart of our policies. Once again, the government has run shy of these difficult choices. It leaves us at the mercy of a personal debt time bomb, and global warming. We really just haven't got the time to sit around and hope "it will all be ok."'