Last year, the Government received £22,400 in taxes per household in the UK. It spent £25,871. The difference - £3471 - was borrowed.
This is the story of a generation. We inherited a country that had long lived beyond its means, with money borrowed every year to plug the gap. Imagine borrowing £3471 every year with no means to pay it back, where would your family be after 10 years? The answer is simple – bankrupt – and that is where this country was in 2010.
We have turned things round. The deficit – the difference between what we spend as country and what we receive in taxes – has been cut by a third. That means that each year we have to borrow less and less. We baulk at £3471 borrowed for every household. In 2010 it stood at £5675. We have made difficult decisions about public spending, but it is working, the deficit is coming down.
It is our ambition to eliminate the deficit completely, putting the country back into surplus so that every year we can actually pay off our debts rather than add to them. This is responsible.
This week the Chancellor set out steps to get the deficit down by a further £11.5 billion. As promised, the NHS and education budgets are both protected. There will be no cuts to military numbers and the equipment budget for our brave servicemen will rightly go up.
We are setting aside money to enable local Councils to freeze Council Tax for the next two years. This means that Council Tax will have been frozen for the entire Parliament, 5 years, worth £100 to the average family. For those on fixed incomes this is a real help.
There will be further caps to welfare and fairness will be extended. Benefit claimants who do not speak English will have to learn or lose their benefits. Pensioners who retire to the sun will lose their winter fuel payments in a new ‘temperature test’, freeing up money to help pensioners through the British winter.
Britain has to live within its means, but that does not have to come at the price of progress. Through reform, getting more from every pound we spend; growth, to give Britain the education, enterprise and economic infrastructure it needs; and fairness, making sure that those with the broadest shoulders bear the largest burden, we can move forward in a way that is affordable.
Three years ago, Gordon Brown’s Government borrowed £157 billion a year. Next year we will borrow £49 billion less. Blind faith, denial and more borrowing will not work. Our changes, our courage to tackle our debts and not just leave them to our children – they are working.
