Chris Mullin is right about taxes (Forget tax cuts. We need a tax rise – or Britain’s public services will collapse, 23 October). As a nation, we need to adopt a totally different approach. Why are we not encouraged to think of tax as an investment in our future health and wellbeing instead of regarding it as “legalised theft” of our hard-earned wages? Scandinavian countries seem to work successfully to this higher tax model.
Surely those who complain about waits for ambulances, the lack of hospital beds, the scandalous cost of childcare, the lack of care for elderly relatives, crumbling schools, the shambles that is our public transport system wish to see improvements in those areas. Where is the money needed going to come from, if not from our taxes?
That is not to say that I think our tax system is fair. There are still far too many loopholes that prevent everyone paying their fair share, but with a competent government in charge, greater fairness could easily be achieved. For too long, the Tories have been peddling the myth that we can have our cake and eat it. Well, the cake is rotten and the rats are nibbling away at the remains. If we want cake for all, we will have to be prepared to fund enough ingredients.
Christine Kearns
Birmingham
• It is wrong to follow uncritically the conventional wisdom that the “unfunded” tax reductions and expenditure increases in the Truss-Kwarteng mini-budget created a hole in the nation’s finances that can only be filled by further austerity (Hunt’s expected austerity drive – where will the axe fall?, 18 October). Of course, the mini-budget did not propose unfunded tax reductions; they were to be funded by borrowing. As a result, government debt would have risen faster than GDP, which is unsustainable in the long run because ultimately debt interest would absorb the whole of GDP.
But in the short term, and in the right circumstances, it’s entirely appropriate for government debt to rise faster than GDP, as happened in 2009-10 in response to the world financial crash, in 2020-21 because of Covid, and now again due to the energy emergency.
The hole in public finances following the various U-turns is around £40bn. As the national debt is currently around £2.42tn, to fund this by additional borrowing would increase the debt by 1.6%. Surely this is a better option than another round of vicious spending cuts?
Geoff Renshaw
University of Warwick
• In your article on spending cuts, I was surprised that local government was omitted from the list of vital public services – once again (‘No fat left to trim’: how spending cuts could affect UK government, 25 October).
Local council funding was severely cut under George Osborne’s policy of austerity, despite delivering a raft of vital frontline services related to social care, education, housing, the environment and many more.
A large number of local councils are now facing being unable to provide statutory services, let alone anything else, and becoming bankrupt. Moreover, they are lumbered with an out-of-date and unfair system of council tax, which is used to raise taxes by the back door. Enough is enough.
Bill Stephenson
Harrow council leader, 2010-12
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