Tories Are Hypocrites For Complaining - Cable

11.30.00am BST (GMT +0100) Wed 10th Oct 2007

The Liberal Democrats today accused the Tories of hypocrisy, following Conservative complaints that Alistair Darling had stolen their tax policies.

Several key proposals announced yesterday which the Conservatives claimed were their own, had actually originally been proposed by the Liberal Democrats. They include:

· Charging aviation tax on planes, not passengers (passed by Liberal Democrat conference in 2004)

· Taxing non-domiciles (passed by Liberal Democrat conference in 2007)

· Increasing the inheritance tax threshold (passed by Liberal Democrat conference in 2007)

However, only the Liberal Democrats have fully costed proposals to reduce the burden on middle and low-income households by scrapping council tax and reducing the national rate of income tax by 4p.

Commenting, Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor and Deputy Leader, Vince Cable MP said:

"For the Tories to be complaining about the Government stealing their policies is like a gang of thieves protesting about their houses being burgled.

"We're used to having our ideas stolen, if there were intellectual property rights protecting political ideas we would be a very rich party. However, the similarities between the two major parties mean that there are core areas of tax policy which neither the Conservatives nor Labour party are willing to tackle.

"Both Alistair Darling and the Conservatives have failed to come up with any measures to help the poorest in society or alternatives to the discredited Council Tax, which is now due to rise at double the rate of inflation.

"Despite the support of the Tories environmental commission for green taxes, they have backed away from them rapidly. It is only the Liberal Democrats who are arguing for a substantial switch from taxes on income to taxes on pollution.

"The flat rate poll tax both parties have proposed for non-doms would completely fail to make the likes of Roman Abramovic pay their fair share of tax."