LIBERAL DEMOCRATS leader Nick Clegg has rejected Conservative-backed proposals to freeze UK welfare payments for two years. However, he has not ruled out cuts in some benefits over the coming years as the government struggles to deal with budget difficulties.
At yesterday’s party conference in Brighton, Mr Clegg expressed determination to block the benefits freeze, a proposal floated by chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne. The chancellor has suggested that the bulk of the £10 billion (€12.5 billion) in savings needed could come from the welfare budget.
“What I can assure you is that we will not allow some of these wild suggestions, that have been made from the right in British politics, that all the savings should come from welfare, ‘Let’s just scoop out a £10 billion-sized hole from welfare’. No,” Mr Clegg, said during a question-and-answer session.
Pledging higher taxes for the rich, he promised that efforts to find savings would “start at the top, not the bottom”. He had earlier announced that people with more than £1 million in assets would face greater scrutiny during annual checks by Revenue and Customs.
Up to now the Lib Dems have not succeeded in increasing the tax take from the wealthy, and have failed to get their proposals for a mansion tax on homes worth more than £2 million past the Tories, following opposition from prime minister David Cameron.
Throughout the day the Lib Dems sought to highlight their contribution to the 2½-year-old government. Senior figures insisted that extra education spending, greater investment in green industries and civil liberties would not have occurred during a Conservative-majority administration.
Mr Clegg proposed that parents could use their pension contributions to guarantee mortgages for their children. “We have thousands of young people who are desperate to get their feet on the first rung of the property ladder but deposits have doubled and the number of young people asking help from family members has doubled,” he said.
“We are going to work out ways in which parents and grandparents who want to help their children and grandchildren buy a property of their own, we are going to allow those parents and grandparents to act as a guarantee, if you like, so their youngsters . . . can take out a deposit and buy a home.”
Meanwhile, business secretary Vince Cable will today announce plans to set up a state-backed bank to merge £1 billion of state investment with private lending to create a £10 billion pot from which loans would be offered to small and medium-sized firms struggling to borrow.
Mr Cable pledged to back potentially successful firms. “We are so good at so many things in this country – but for too long the mirage of growth based on property speculation and financial gambling has hidden the harder virtues of making things productively.”
Despite a belief in many quarters that the party is heading for electoral destruction, a poll in the Sunday Telegraph put the junior coalition partner on 18 per cent, a far higher figure than they have achieved in a series of polls in recent months and which, if reflected in the ballot box, would safeguard many of their existing Commons seats, though not all.
The endless speculation about Mr Clegg’s survival as leader has irritated many in the party, with many delegates at the conference privately seeking an end to the debate. They particularly criticised Lord Matthew Oakeshott, who has been one of Mr Clegg’s most visible critics.
Equally, many in the party would prefer an end, for now at least, to calls for a Labour-Liberal Democrats pact after the next general election, even though a poll by the Fabian Society of members of both parties showed they had nearly identical concerns.
