Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey (Dominic Lipinski/PA)
(Picture: PA Wire)Life’s been tough for Londoners lately. After all the sacrifices of the Covid pandemic, our city is now facing a cost-of-living emergency.
Soaring energy bills, food prices and sky-high housing costs are overwhelming too many families. We face the biggest fall in living standards since the Fifties. The Government must act now.
Londoners are doing their bit: working hard, raising their families and caring for loved ones. They deserve more help from the Government, so they don’t spend the whole month worrying how they’ll pay the next gas bill.
But Tory ministers either don’t get it or just don’t care. They are doing nothing to help — instead, they are adding to the pain with their unfair tax rises.
Their National Insurance increase — a broken Conservative promise at the worst possible time — has already cost London and the South-East a whopping £520 million this month alone. And that’s not all. Rishi Sunak is hammering families with another tax rise, by freezing income tax thresholds. This stealth tax will drag 630,000 low-earners across London and the South-East into paying income tax, and push another 750,000 middle-earners into the higher 40p tax bracket.
These unfair Conservative tax hikes are the exact opposite of what people need right now. They will only make the cost-of-living emergency worse.
What we need instead is a big tax cut to put money back into people’s pockets. That’s why the Liberal Democrats have called for an emergency VAT cut, to save struggling families £600 each this year and boost spending in high streets across the capital. That’s the bold action hardworking families deserve.
But it’s not just on tax that the Conservatives are letting Londoners down and taking us for granted. They’ve plunged our NHS into crisis, making cancer patients wait and leaving loved ones desperate for that urgent ambulance. They’ve voted repeatedly to let water companies keep pumping filthy sewage into our rivers. And they’ve presided over the closure of 36 of London’s police stations, and 23 more across the South East, while failing to deliver the extra officers they promised.
All that must change. Londoners are turning to the Liberal Democrats because they know we work hard for our communities, hear your concerns, and we never take you for granted.
Every vote for the Liberal Democrats in these elections is a vote to send Boris Johnson’s Conservatives a message. It’s a vote to elect a strong local champion who will fight for a fair deal for you.
