Keep up to date
Get the latest Conservative news sent straight to you

Find a news story

or

News story

Brown's VAT cut is a £12.5 billion failure

Wednesday, January 14 2009

David Cameron

David Cameron dismissed Gordon Brown’s VAT cut as “an expensive failure” at Prime Minister’s Questions.

He attacked Mr. Brown for wasting £12.5 billion of taxpayers’ money on a 2.5% cut that has been ridiculed by shoppers and condemned by retailers.

Britain’s biggest retailers have attacked the VAT reduction, with the head of Marks & Spencer saying it hasn’t made a difference, and the head of Sainsbury’s describing it as an annoyance.

David stressed the cut had achieved nothing, and attacked the Prime Minister for adding yet more money to the national debt:

“By spending £12.5 billion on a VAT cut, isn’t he just building up debts for Britain’s children to save his own skin?”

David also accused Labour of copying Conservative policies, after introducing "pale imitations" of our package to help jobseekers return to work and our loan guarantee scheme.

Rt Hon David Cameron MP

David was elected Leader of the Conservatives in December 2005, on a mandate to change the Party and change the country.

Read more
Cameron David

What we must do to get our economy back on its feet

To see the video player you need to have javascript enabled and the latest version of Flash. Get Adobe Flash Player here.

In this video, recorded just before he delivered the annual Mais lecture, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne talks about the Conservative Party's plans to get the British economy back on its feet.