Daily Archives: 25 Sep 2023

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25 Sep 2023

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Planning applications validated by EDDC for week beginning 11 September

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25 Sep 2023

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With talk of cutting inheritance tax, Rishi Sunak is beginning to look like a Liz Truss tribute act

Threatened by an electoral defeat, what’s a multi-millionaire Prime Minister to do?

Read the letter from Daren Jones, MP, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury below, spells it out!  – Owl

For something that hardly affects anyone, and is in any case paid only after one passes away, inheritance tax appears to hold a strange fascination for the Conservative mind. It is as though there is something in the psyche that refuses to accept the maxim “You can’t take it with you.”

Editorial www.independent.co.uk 

Scrapping inheritance tax is an old favourite, and is often floated when ministers are searching for an eye-catching initiative that could, they believe, help them to win a looming, somewhat difficult, general election. Sometimes, as now, it smacks of desperation.

Taxes on the estate of the deceased are certainly unpopular, if not macabre, and every so often the Tory spin machine will seek to capitalise on this resentment and put out the notion of abolishing the levy, or radically increasing the threshold at which it must be paid. This is indeed happening again now, as Rishi Sunak seeks to create more “dividing lines” between his government and the opposition.

The recent retreat on net zero is another textbook example of this strategy. There was no pressing need to smash the cross-party consensus on climate change; it was merely an attempt to confect a policy contrast for short-term electoral gain. Many more (almost arbitrary) populist policy proposals for the next Tory manifesto will be set out as campaigning gathers pace, and we have no doubt that migration, trans rights, and other “culture war” issues will be ruthlessly exploited. Whatever else, the British general election of 2024 promises to be an unusually dirty and bitter affair.

Perhaps because what used to be called death duties impinge on people’s lives only rarely – a fact that no one is complaining about – inheritance tax is widely misunderstood. Only 3.7 per cent of estates are affected, the equivalent of some 27,000 families in all. Where a couple is involved, the effect of a relatively high basic threshold (£375,000) combined with spousal exemptions means that they can pass on as much as £1m to their descendants entirely tax-free. That threshold should be viewed in the context of the value of the average UK home – £288,000.

There are also additional reliefs applicable to farms and businesses that are passed on; and increasingly, personal pension pots are being used as highly tax-efficient methods of avoiding taxes on bequests.

As ever, the rich can get richer by playing the system – and the super-rich, with access to lawyers and offshore trusts, can get away with paying zero tax. When an individual dies before the age of 75, funds remaining in their pension escape income tax entirely – there is income tax relief when the money is paid into the pension, and no income tax when it is taken out. Furthermore, any funds that remain in someone’s pension when they die (at any age) are not subject to inheritance tax.

In other words, a vast swathe of personal wealth is simply ignored by the state. The present set-up is extremely generous to the descendants of the already wealthy – a group concentrated in London and the South East who, unsurprisingly, tend themselves to be older “baby boomers” as well as Conservative voters.

Abolishing inheritance tax would deprive the Exchequer of some £6bn – one of the smaller tax takes, but a significant one. It seems an odd move when vital infrastructure schemes such as HS2 are being mutilated for a supposed lack of funds.

There’s little reason to think that getting rid of inheritance tax would raise the economic growth rate as effectively as capital investment. It would certainly create an even less equal society, adding in particular to disparities in housing. There is no case for raising the threshold. But some cuts in inheritance tax seem to be on the cards, as far as No 10 is concerned.

This is entirely consonant with the other story doing the rounds in the media, which is that the Conservatives will extend the “triple lock” on increases to the state pension. Once again, this is a measure that benefits the old at the expense of the young, and exacerbates the intergenerational divide that is scarring society.

It is also consistent with the easing of our CO2 emissions targets, which will affect those growing up now rather than their parents and grandparents. “Culture war” issues and Euroscepticism are additional sharp dividing lines, as much between generations as between classes. In this context, it hardly seems surprising that Labour beat the Conservatives by 43 percentage points among 18- to 24-year-olds at the last election (or that Sir Keir Starmer seems quite keen on enfranchising 16- and 17-year-olds).

Mr Sunak seems to be following an undeclared “core vote” strategy, seeking to consolidate the Conservative baseline vote – say about 30 per cent of the electorate – with the hope that an improving economy next year will add a few more percentage points and deprive Labour of a majority.

That may be Mr Sunak’s best hope, realistically, but it also means that he isn’t even trying to reach out to the wider electorate – the young and hard-pressed families who expect to inherit little, if anything, from their elders. Talk of prioritising unfunded tax cuts for the rich, along with significant and indefinite guaranteed increases in the state pension, is also inconsistent with the government’s claim to be pursuing a strategy of fiscal responsibility.

Only a few days ago, the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, declared that it would be “virtually impossible” to cut taxes before the election. The country may well wonder why it got rid of Liz Truss for her recklessness a year ago if Mr Sunak, once thought so responsible and fair-minded, is just going to recycle her policies. The prime minister should think again.

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25 Sep 2023

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Devon’s dangerous nightmare potholes need to be addressed

Prospective Tory candidate slams DCC record on highway maintenance – no it’s not ultra loyalist Simon Jupp (nor whatshisname for Exmouth and Exeter East)! – Owl

Devon County Council has been warned it is building up huge financial problems for the future by failing to maintain its road network. It’s been urged to make a special bid for Government funding to tackle its backlog of road repairs – or face ‘unmanageably high’ bills in a few years’ time.

Lewis Clarke www.devonlive.com

Drivers have become highly critical of the poor state of the county’s network of 8,000 miles of road – the largest network in the country. Devon County Council does have the largest road network in England.

The council will invest £66 million in highways and bridge maintenance in 2023/24. But concerns have been raised over the fact some rural roads are ‘dangerous to drive’.

Prospective parliamentary candidate Ian Liddell-Grainger says special efforts must be made to implement a wide-ranging programme of improvements. Mr Liddell-Grainger, who intends to contest the new Tiverton and Minehead parliamentary constituency for the Conservatives, has slammed the Conservative run Devon County Council and said the longer the problem was neglected the more serious would be the eventual outcome.

“From the point of view of road safety alone the county council must start addressing this issue urgently because quite frankly many stretches of Devon’s roads are now dangerous to drive,” he said.

“Tourists arriving from other parts of the country must be horrified to find themselves negotiating fracturing surfaces and massive potholes and although local drivers are probably resigned to all that as a fact of life it doesn’t hide the fact that substandard road surfaces can frequently be a contributory cause of accidents.

“Doing nothing is not an acceptable option. Any road engineer will tell you that if road surfaces are allowed to deteriorate past a certain point they can no longer be patched or repaired, they have to be rebuilt, which is a hugely expensive operation.

“If Devon County Council allows that point to be reached it will clearly be left with unmanageably high bills which are bound to impact massively on what it has available to spend on other services.”

In response, a DCC spokesperson said: “Road maintenance investment is a national issue. The backlog of carriageway repairs in England and Wales has reached £14.02 billion, and in Devon it is over £200 million. The Government’s additional £9.4 million announced at the Spring Budget to help tackle this has been very welcome.

“But given that Devon has 8,000 miles of roads, the largest road network in England, with more than half of these categorised as Unclassified and having evolved over time in rural areas, this only partially addresses the sheer scale of the challenge. These challenges are further compounded by inflation, and more frequent severe weather events.

“Despite these pressures, our Highways and Traffic Management Service has continued to focus on reviewing and improving current working practices to increase efficiency and reduce disruption.

“This has been highlighted in benchmarking data from the National Highway and Transport Network (NHT) which shows us to be an efficient highways authority which strives to squeeze the maximum from our limited resources while also taking a national lead on carbon efficiency.

“We are investing £66 million in highways and bridge maintenance in 2023/24, this includes the additional £9.4 million from Government and a further £500,000 from our own efficiency savings.”

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Rishi Sunak’s rollback on green targets gets thumbs up from Trump

“I always knew Sunak was smart, that he wasn’t going to destroy and bankrupt his nation for fake climate alarmists that don’t have a clue,” Donald Trump

Donald Trump calls Rishi Sunak ‘smart’ for easing climate targets

Annabelle Dickson www.politico.eu

LONDON — British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s easing of green policies has won the backing of Donald Trump.

In a post on his Truth Social media account late Saturday, the former U.S. president congratulated Sunak for announcing last week that he is paring back his green pledges.

Sunak has confirmed a major roll-back of several key U.K. green policies, including easing the transition to electric vehicles and shifting a date for a ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 until 2035. He also promised there would be more time to transition to heat pumps.

“I always knew Sunak was smart, that he wasn’t going to destroy and bankrupt his nation for fake climate alarmists that don’t have a clue,” Trump wrote.

Trump, who is leading the polls in the contest for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination, said the U.S. “keeps rolling merrily along, spending Trillions of Dollars trying to do that which is not doable, while at the same time breathing in the filthy and totally untreated air floating over our once great Country from China, India, Russia, and Parts Unknown.”

Sunak argued last week that continuing with the current climate policies risked “losing the consent of the British people — and the resulting backlash will not just be against specific policies, but against the wider mission itself, meaning we might never achieve our goal.” But Sunak insists he is still committed to reaching net zero by 2050.

Trump added: “Congratulations to Prime Minister Sunak for recognizing this SCAM before it was too late!”