Constrained Cameron wants lower taxes
Taxes will only be lowered once the “appalling” public finances are dealt with, David Cameron has said.
The prime minister said he was “still a low-tax Conservative” as he began efforts to retain his Tory identity.
The final coalition document published on Thursday has seen the prime minister emphasise the common ground between his party and its coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats.
Now Mr Cameron has begun attempting to reassure anxious grassroots Conservatives that he remains a Tory prime minister.
“What the people who voted for me have is something they can be proud of. I need to reassure them I am a Conservative prime minister – yes, leading a coalition government – but a Conservative prime minister and I am conscious that they voted for me and I want to deliver for them,” he said in an interview with the Telegraph newspaper.
He began this process by issuing a reassurance that the government would look at the yields from different taxes to see whether they are “effective and efficient”.
Mr Cameron said he had doubts about the 50p top rate of income tax.
The “great thing” about being in power, he added, was the ability to examine the figures: “Let’s have a look and see.”
The Tories are adopting the Lib Dems’ primary manifesto aim, raising the tax-free allowance to £10,000, in a bid to help the low-paid.
Further measures are likely to be constrained by the pressing need to deal with the structural deficit, however.
“I absolutely do believe in a lower tax country and I want to deliver lower marginal rates of tax,” Mr Cameron said.
“The problem is the appalling budget deficit.”
