While continuing to expose the negative link between the welfare system and the health of men, women and children, let’s draft a dream about polices for land, income and justice to bring peace to a troubled land – peace that is not only about the absence of conflict but also the presence of well being.
It starts with land that provides food and fuel, and on which shelter is built. Land is a common good that has been and is being grabbed for private profit while tenants are being pushed around in the same way as they have been since the Magna Carta, when the barons claimed access to common land. The barons are now the national and international wealthy, parking their cash in London property; corporations all but run by Her Majesties Revenue and Customs, which is not accountable to a minister.
A land value tax on all land could aim to fund most of the services run by central and local government in the UK, and enable to the abolition of council tax, business rates and stamp duty and the reduction of income tax. Land cannot be deposited in overseas accounts. This idea works in Denmark, the happiest nation on earth, Taiwan the first Asian tiger, and Hong Kong, where businesses are happy to pay rent to the government rent to trade there; the island has no goods and services tax, harmonised sales tax or value-added tax. Income tax is low.
That policy should be coupled with an guaranteed untaxed minimum income for every man, woman and child that provides the capacity to buy a healthy diet, the fuel to cook it and keep warm, to buy clothes, transport, shelter and other necessities.
Access to justice should be restored and promoted in the context of trusting the people. "Yes, trust the people. You, who are ambitious, and rightly ambitious, of being the guardians of the British Constitution, trust the people, and they will trust you—and they will follow you and join you in the deference of that Constitution against any and every foe." Said Lord Randolph Churchill in 1884. The foe is now a rampant market that has globalised to such an extent that it has left us people of the UK and our communities behind. Make the international market work for us by locking it into our land to pay for our services.
Revd Paul Nicolson, Taxpayers Against Poverty, London N17
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