15/04/03 - Higher taxes won't improve services: Chris writes to The Birmingham Post

Sir, - Before Labour was elected, Tony Blair pledged that 'We've no plans to increase tax at all'. Yet since 1997, we have been hammered with more than 53 tax rises, with the total tax take rising by 50 per cent.

This month, hard-working people across the West Midlands have been hit with shrinking pay packets thanks to higher National Insurance, frozen income tax allowances and soaring council tax bills - making a typical couple on average full-time earnings pounds 568 a year worse off as a result.

Pensioners have lost out too, thanks to Gordon Brown's pounds 5 billion a year pensions tax. A typical personal pension saver now retires on half what he or she would have got five years ago.

But what have we got to show for all this extra spending? Taxes are going up, but without the improvements in public services we all want to see. More and more taxpayers' money is being wasted. For example, under Labour, for the first time ever, there are now more administrators in the NHS than hospital beds, and administration costs in the Department of Health have soared by 50 per cent.

The way to end Labour's cycle of failing public services is to ensure that public services are reformed and improved.

Ever-higher taxes are not the answer.

CHRIS D KELLY TETTENHALL, WOLVERHAMPTON.