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Berwick Upon Tweed

 

  • Alan Strickland (Labour) - No response received
  • Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Conservative) - No response received
  • Alan Beith (Lib Dem) - see response
  • Michael Weatheritt (UKIP) - No response received

 

Name: Alan Strickland

Party: Labour

Contact details: alan@berwick-labour.org.uk


This candidate has not yet responded please complete the e-action form and ask them to reply to our 5 pledges.

 

Name: Anne-Marie Trevelyan

Party: Conservative

Contact details: anne-marie@berwickconservatives.com


This candidate has not yet responded please complete the e-action form and ask them to reply to our 5 pledges.

 

Name: Alan Beith

Party: Lid Dem

Contact details: alanbeith@berwicklibdems.org.uk


Liberal Democrats support the underlying principles of your call for quality public services, but the current economic climate will require some degree of public sector restraint.  We cannot therefore guarantee that there will be no public sector job cuts or local office closures.
 
The government estimates there is a tax gap of £40bn over half of which could legitimately be classed as straightforward tax avoidance or evasion.  To tackle this Liberal Democrats will introduce a tax anti-avoidance principle toensure that people pay the amount of tax prescribed not just by the letter, but the spirit of the law.
 
Liberal Democrats will also create a rule which looks through transactions so that properties which have been transferred as part of a company still have to pay stamp duty land tax.  Using resources freed up from - amongst other things - removing 3.6m people from income tax through our reform of the tax system, we will invest in anti-evasion capabilities within HMRC.  The key focus will be to find those who work outside the tax system and bring them into it.
 
These proposals may well require more staff but this would be funded by commercial rate charges levied for pre-clearance services.  In addition, by reducing the number of people in the income tax system, we would expect to free up a considerable amount of staff time.
 
Liberal Democrats have already announced a unique policy for public sector pay.  As we pay down the budget deficit, public sector budgets are inevitably going to come uner ever greater pressure.  If we are to prevent widespread job losses in the public sector there will have to be pay restraint.  We will therefore cap public sector pay rises at £400 per person for two years to limit the growth of the public sector pay bill while ensuring fairness for teachers, nurses, police officers and other public sector workers.  By capping pay rises in this way we will ensure tht those with the lowest salaries receive the highest percentage increases.
 
Every public sector worker will be eligible for a pro-rata pay rise of up to £400.  This is the equivalent of a 2% pay rise for someone on £20,000 a year, but a 3.3% rise for someone on £12,000 and a 0.4% rise for someone earning £100,000.  This cap will be in place initially for two years.  £400 is a pay cap not a guaranteed pay increase to everyone.  Within the £400 pay cap pay will be negotiated as under the current system.
 
At present, all bar one (the Local Government Pension Scheme) of the public sector pension schemes are unfunded.  This means that rather than the contributions paid by the employees and employers being invested to pay for future pension payments, they go to the Treasury and are used to pay current pensions.  This means nothing is being saved or put aside to meet future costs because all the money is used to pay the pensions of people who have already retired.
 
In recent years the cost of the pensions of those who have retired has been larger than the contributions coming in from current workers and the Treasury is having to use tax receipts to plug the gap.  This year plugging the gap will cost the Treasury an estimated £4.1bn, twenty times the amount it had to pay in 2005.  Predictions are that this gap will only grow wider.
 
In addition, those who do best out of public sector pensions are not low paid teachers or nurses, but high-flying civil servants, judges and NHS executives who receive large increases in their salaries at the end of their careers.  Liberal Democrats will therefore immediately establish an independent commission, along the lines of the Turner Commission which looked into other pensions issues a few years ago, to examine the long-term future of public sector pensions.
 
We would as the commission to look on a scheme-by-scheme basis at issues such as pay levels in the public and private sector, relative job security, the level of contributions that scheme members already make, the structure of pensions in retirement, scheme retirement ages, the way in which benefits are calculated and the cost of the scheme to the taxpayer.
 
However, Liberal Democrats believe that a pension promise made should be a pension promise kept.  We are therefore committed to not making any changes to pension rights that have already been accrued by public sector workers.
 
Finally, it is very important that the equality implications of any reforms are fully taken into account.
 

 

Name: Micheal Wheatheritt

Party: UKIP

Contact details: weatheritt@tiscalli.co.uk


This candidate has not yet responded please complete the e-action form and ask them to reply to our 5 pledges.