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Chloe Smith, Member of Parliament for Norwich North, today commended the Government's Budget with its plan to reform the economy to support jobs and growth, and to take steps to help families with the cost of living – including an immediate cut in fuel duty. Furthermore the Budget confirmed as part [...]

                Every year that Labour was in power they announced a clampdown on avoidance and evasion of tax. Every year more complicated provisions were put into Finance Acts to make it more difficult for people to evade tax (illegal), and to make more avoidance schemes (legal) into illegal devices. You [...]

Yesterday, I went to BSG Property Services in Tempsford, to see the new photovoltaic installation at their business premises. The twenty two solar panels are producing enough power to reduce bills and provide a substantial payment from the power they are feeding into the National Grid. Apparently, the business [...]

Delyn MP David Hanson is urging his constituents today to save money on their household gas and...

Delyn MP David Hanson is urging his constituents today to save money on their household gas and electricity bills and reduce their carbon emissions by taking up the energy efficiency measures that energy companies in the UK offer. Following an agreement with the government in September 2008, the major energy [...]

Maybe you were one of the 11,278 Edmonton residents who topped up at one of the 45 PayPoint outlets across the constituency over the Christmas holiday, or one of the 848 who topped up on Christmas Day? Maybe your lights went out; your gas ran out? I bet you're glad [...]

                    A government needs both strategy and tactics. A sensible government, if it makes a tactical error, will quickly apologise, adjust and move on. If a government makes a serious strategic error – like John Major’s ERM decision or Gordon Brown’s boom and bust policy-  it is likely to be [...]

               The business world is making a bad fist of presenting its case. We are back in the usual territory. The public mood says profits are bad. Senior business people are fat cats. Bonuses are wicked forbidden  fruit. Oil companies are making huge profits out of high prices. Banks are [...]

                 Roughly half of all the money spent is in the public sector, and half in the private sector.  Around one fifth of all the public money spent is borrowed.  The other fourth fifths comes from taxing the private sector.                 Most people now agree we cannot carry on borrowing at [...]

                    My two grandfathers were working class. They both lived in rented accommodation, and earned their living from a skilled trade. They both spent teenage years in the trenches in France fighting for their country.   One, a farrier, had to become a labourer for the electricity company when horse shoeing went [...]

                    My two grandfathers were working class. They both lived in rented accommodation, and earned their living from a skilled trade. They both spent teenage years in the trenches in France fighting for their country.   One, a farrier, had to become a labourer for the electricity company when horse shoeing went [...]

Chloe Smith, MP for Norwich North, this week joined the campaign to require energy companies to give discounts to more of their most vulnerable customers. She highlights Save the Children's recent report into the extra cost that people on lower incomes pay compared with higher income families for goods and services. [...]

                There has been considerable interest in my factory visit last Friday. I am still thinking about it. Like a great sporting achievement, the pleasant experience lives on in my memory.                 There were two moments  above all in the visit when I realised they were very good. The first was [...]

PEOPLE have been mystified by the inability of Welsh Secretary Cheryl Gillan to recall her Presumed Consent Organ Donation Bill which she introduced into the House of Commons in 2002, but it seems that the probable answer is that her own consent had been presumed by the Tory whips.When she [...]

THIS year the Government's savage cuts will hit people even harder and as your local MP I am committed to stand up and oppose cuts which are being made on ideological grounds rather than in the national interests.These cuts could effect most of the people in Cardiff from those who [...]

                 Today representatives of business will meet the Prime Minister to discuss the government’s growth strategy. The government is keen to stress that it understands the need for growth, to generate the jobs to get people back to work, and to generate all the extra tax revenue they have forecast [...]

Another cold, still day in Clacton. Looking out to sea at the massive wind turbines built off our coast, I wonder how much energy they're producing right now?  Not a great deal, if non-rotating blades are anything to go by.    [...]

Today is the day that VAT rises to 20 per cent. More or less every time you buy something (with the exception of food and some other items), you’ll have to give the state a fifth of the value of the transaction.  Even with a new growth Tsar, I’m not sure [...]

    Happy New Year to all my readers. Thank you for your New Year resolutions.              I have suggested the government  resolve to get inflation down (December 30th) and to make it more worthwhile to grow a business here (December 29th) in the UK. There is a third resolution that  I propose to them if they [...]

The government has said that if over 100,000 people sign a petition, it could lead to a debate in Parliament.  Good.  Instead of having to hope that someone in the Westminster village shares your concerns, you now have a formal mechanism to get them to respond to issues [...]

              Backing down over a £13 million cut in a grant to a charity giving books to young children is not going to make much difference to our public spending position. The government plans to spend around £700 billilon this year.              The government’s friends will say it shows wisdom and flexibility. A [...]