Nick Clegg on Andrew Marr: Tories want tax cuts for the wealthy, I want to put £100 back in workers' pockets

Nick Clegg was on Andrew Marr today talking about his wish to see the Government raise the tax threshold by a further £500, putting £100 back in people's comments. If you agree, by the way, sign the petition here.

Without any hint of rancour or peevishness, he put a lot of effort into demonstrating that the Tories favoured tax cuts for the rich while the Liberal Democrats favour tax cuts for ordinary people. He listed the Tory plans - cutting inheritance tax, cutting the top rate of tax, marriage tax breaks, that the Liberal Democrats opposed.

Again he looked relaxed and confident, and also a bit like he'd been messing with the Strictly Come Dancing spray tan machine. What's going on there, I wonder?

I was much happier with his language on the community tensions in Sheffield as well - it was much more consensual and his point on the need for dialogue was not lost this time. He also was absolutely clear that he wasn't going to see any group of people villified.

And, finally, on the age of consent controversy, he said he wouldn't favour a reduction to 15 but talked about the need for much better sex education.

Why, though, do journalists never ask the questions you want them to? An extra £100 to basic rate tax payers is fine but I'm not sure I want it to be the pinnacle of our ambition. It makes the extra £2000 we'd promise for the next Parliament look uninspiring - although you have to see that in the context of more help with childcare, more nursery places for the most deprived two year olds and the like. What worries me, though, is that there are single income households where less than £10,000 is coming in. They won't get that extra £100 and they are really struggling. What can be done to help them?

Here's a storify thingy of mine and others' tweets.

Why it's worth being a member of the Liberal Democrats

Today, the Liberal Democrats fulfilled their key election pledge of raising the income tax threshold to £10,000.

And they've produced a nifty little picture to tell us about it. And we should rightly be proud.

This doesn't tell the whole story, though. How did this get in to our manifesto in the first place? Did it fall out of the Orange Book and hit David Laws on the head? I have to say there's no clue in either of the emails I've seen from Danny Alexander today.

Actually no. It came from an idea by Chester's Elizabeth Jewkes, way back in early 2009. The Chester Lib Dems website has the story.

If the Income Tax threshold was raised to £11,174 then every adult who works full time would be £20 a week better off. Putting £1,000 a year back into the pockets of working people and helping to improve their quality of life. The government should be supporting working people more’ claims Elizabeth. ‘And reducing the amount of tax the lowest paid have to pay is one way of doing that.’

Elizabeth discussed this with Vince Cable when he visited Manchester last October and he agreed it was excellent idea. With the support of Vince Cable M.P. and Jo Swinson M.P. Elizabeth presented her policy suggestion the Liberal Democrats policy conference at the London School of Economics on 17 January where it received an enthusiastic reception. Nick Clegg told Elizabeth that he is supporting her proposal and in his speech Vince Cable singled out Elizabeth’s proposal as one which has his support too.

The idea was adopted by the Party at its Conference in 2009 and today has been delivered in Government. I think the Party should be making quite a fuss of Lizzie Jewkes right now. Her original idea, of raising the threshold to the minimum wage, has still to be reached. Maybe we should be pushing for that ahead of the next General Election.

It just goes to show that party members can shape and influence the party's direction. If you have some good, liberal ideas, then now is the time to be putting them forward as we develop our platform for 2015. If you're not already a member, you can join us here.

Labour lefties help Liberal Democrats achieve election promise

Nobody was really expecting another rise in the Income Tax threshold in yesterday's Autumn Statement. A significant rise, to over £9,000 had already been announced. When Chancellor George Osborne revealed that there would be a further rise to £9440, he didn't add on the rest of the story - that this would mean that the Liberal Democrats' key pledge of raising the threshold to £10,000 by 2015, looked certain to be met.

The tax threshold pledge was right there on the front page of our manifesto. Nick Clegg had talked for years about making the tax system fairer, citing the example of the millionaire banker who paid a lower marginal rate of tax on his income than his minimum wage cleaner paid on hers. That was a scandalous situation and one which the Liberal Democrats have done much to remedy. The rate of Capital Gains Tax has gone up by 10%. The same banker who under Labour would have had tax relief to put  up to quarter of a million quid a year into a pension fund can now only put away £40,000.

But going back to the point of this post, the reason we can be pretty certain that the £10,000 target will be met is down to two Labour MPs in the 1970s. Audrey Wise was a bit of a leftie, while Jeff Rooker must have mellowed given that he served in the Blair Government. They put a rebel amendment to the 1977 Budget to ensure that tax thresholds would rise at the same rate as inflation.The Conservatives  and, I assume the Liberals, voted for it and statutory indexation of tax thresholds was born. The consequences today mean that the statutory increases alone should give us a £10,000 threshold by 2015.

I doubt that a couple of Labour awkward squad would have anticipated that their amendment would help a Liberal election pledge to come to fruition 35 years later. Thanks, by the way, to Adam Corlett on Twitter who pointed me to the exact piece of legislation.

£600 off the tax bill of every basic rate taxpayer, with millions taken out of paying tax completely is quite something.