Brown's budget speech 'silence' on NHS criticised

3.02.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Fri 24th Mar 2006

Gordon Brown is facing criticism for not doing enough for the NHS in his Budget after a hospital announced job cuts - the fourth to do so in a week. On Wednesday the Royal Free Hospital in London said it was cutting 480 jobs and 100 beds in a bid to save £25m. Over 2,000 job cuts have been announced at UK hospitals in the past week.

"This is a tired budget from a Chancellor who has run out of steam, treading water and waiting for his next job."

In his reply speech Lib Dem Leader Ming Campbell said "The truth is that this is a tired budget from a Chancellor who has run out of steam, treading water, waiting for his next job. Let's take a look at his legacy:

Levels of inequality in incomes and wealth worse than under Mrs. Thatcher;

A pensions system in crisis;

A trillion pounds worth of consumer debt;

Complacency on a threatened environment; and

A Treasury which can't even manage its own tax credits system.

The economy remains, in some key respects, healthy, but there is no room for complacency and no room for ignoring medium and long-term challenges.

As a fellow Scottish radical, let me return to the issue of inequality. The wealthiest 1% own 23% of assets - higher than 1997 - while the poorest 50% own only 6% - lower than 1997. The top 20% of earners pay less of their income in tax than the bottom 20%, while the tax system remains unfair and vastly overcomplicated.

Why does the Chancellor tinker with the tax system when it is so fundamentally unfair and requires radical reform? And every time he tinkers, he adds layer upon layer of complexity - an incitement to fraud.

The most unfair, regressive tax of all remains the Council Tax. But the lack of proper reform to Council Tax is not the only failure to act in the realm of taxation.

Green taxes have fallen as a share of overall taxation under this Government and the measures that the Chancellor has announced today are little more than a token gesture. We need a proper system of green economic incentives: incentives that encourage people to change the way they live - and ensure that the polluter pays. Under this Chancellor, the polluter isn't paying. The bare fact is that CO2 emissions are higher than they were in 1997, and they are continuing to rise."