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Category: Press Releases

  • Iain Duncan Smith – 2002 Press Release on Public Services

    Iain Duncan Smith – 2002 Press Release on Public Services

    Below is a press release issued by the Conservative Party on 17/01/2002.

    The Conservative Leader, Iain Duncan Smith, has said that the Party was firmly fixed on public services. He said that while the problems facing the country were changing, the values that underpinned the Party’s solutions were as relevant as ever.

    In a speech to business leaders in Birmingham, he said that the Conservatives would renew policies using timeless principles to meet the challenges of our time, contrasting that with the Labour Party who stood for power without purpose, politics without principles and governing without direction.

    He accused the Government of having a top-down approach to the public services, thinking that problems can be solved from the top of Government. “My instincts are always to build from the bottom up: to derive policy from the instincts and values of the people we represent, guided by our own values,” he said.

    Mr Duncan Smith went on to say that policy renewal was inseparable from effective Opposition. “The way we develop policy will be characterised by leadership and direction, and based firmly on Conservative values,” he said. The Conservatives had always been successful, he argued, when they articulated a clear view of the problems that Britain faces, and found ways to solve them, by empowering people, rather than pushing them around.

    While in Birmingham, Mr Duncan Smith paid a visit to a local comprehensive school, to meet with staff and pupils.

  • 1999 Press Release – Conservative Party – Labour’s Budget Deception

    Below is the text of a press release which was issued by The Conservative Party on 9 March 1999 and was entitled “Labour’s Budget Deception”.

    Iain Duncan Smith:

    “Gordon Brown deliberately deceived the public by claiming that the Married Couple’s Allowance is paid to lone parents and unmarried parents. This is simply not true – it is the Additional Personal Allowance which is available to these groups, but it’s being abolished as well.

    “If the Chancellor wanted to help married couples he could simply have abolished APA – he did not. The new Children’s Tax Credit is not aimed at married couples and will do nothing to encourage marriage. He said that the saving from abolishing the MCA would be transferred to the Children’s Tax Credit, but he didn’t say that the credit would be delayed for another year. [Financial Statement and Budget Report p112 col.17&18].

    “By not introducing the new tax credits until 2001, the Chancellor has hit married couples with tax hikes of £1.6 billion. He has once again said one thing but done another.

    “This budget is yet another extension of means testing. The increases in the Minimum Pension Guarantee and the Working Families Tax Credit minimum income guarantee added to the taper on the new Children’s tax credit will increase dependency and will penalise those with savings.

    “This is a continuation of the attack on those who work hard and save, in favour of those who do not. They have moved from attacking ‘something for nothing’, to creating a ‘nothing for something’ society.

    “Families, young and old, will now be hit by tax hikes and means tests by a Chancellor who deceived his way through the Budget.”

    ENDS