David Cameron's Budget Reply

Seeing as the BBC cut the coverage of David Cameron's speech here are a few extracts, courtesy of PA.

"You have finally given us a tax cut. You normally do that before a General Election but you are in such a deep hole you have had to do it before the leadership election... You can increase spending and you can cut taxes. Yes, you can share the proceeds of growth... It is a bit like Stalin. They are cheering him on now, he'll wipe them out later... Your great experiment in tax and spending has failed. You are an out of date politician wedded to state control. The question everyone is asking is where has the money gone?... You are the Chancellor who has put the tax burden up. You are the Chancellor who has taken one tax down but put 99 taxes up. The average family is paying £1,300 more because of your Budget decisions. I have to say we will check carefully what is happening to the aligning of national insurance because we think it might be hitting middle-income families...

Let me tell you what the Chancellor's real problem is, it is not that he is a Stalinist who holds all his colleagues in contempt - although I have to say that probably doesn't help, it is that he has wasted money on an industrial scale... For 10 years you have been telling us that education is your priority ... but 40% of primary school leavers can't read properly. For 10 years you have been telling us you want a competitive economy but you have given us the biggest tax burden in our history. For 10 years you have been talking about child poverty - you did it again today - but the number of people living in severe poverty is up by 400,000 and Unicef say that Britain is the worst place in the developed world to bring up children. For 10 years you have been telling us about the NHS, today barely a mention. All you have done is
re-announce this year's money which we already knew. You have got the figures
for the future - why won't you tell us?

Let's look at what was in the Budget but didn't get a mention in the speech, that's always an important list. Soon the Chancellor and his allies, they will be going round the country and saying the spin, the distortions, the half-truths of the Blair era are coming to an end. Some of them have started already but actually with you spin will get worse. We've had a bonanza of spending on the NHS but nurses have been sacked. He brags about people's long term security but the pension system's shot to pieces... There are 160,000 people who only keep 10p out of every extra pound they earn. At least the last time we had a 90% marginal tax rate it was the richest that
paid - it's now the poorest.

As Mr Brown and the Prime Minister talked on the front bench, Mr Cameron said "they are having their annual conversation". In a reference to Mr Blair's appearance on Comic Relief with Catherine Tate, he added: "I don't know why he bothers talking to the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister's not bovvered anymore." He said the Labour Party were "just realising their next leader has the tendencies of Stalin and the poll ratings of Michael Foot." He added: "The front bench are all standing in the deputy leadership contest, they know from history that's the one way to avoid the Gulag."On Mr Brown he said: "For years he wanted to be the young pretender and now he's ended up as the old man in the Kremlin."

His jibes were met by Mr Brown with a dour expression and folded arms, prompting Mr Cameron to joke about his reported dental treatment and recent meetings with celebrities.
"He has spent all that money on his smile, but he won't even throw us one. He won't win over Kylie like that."