On the subject of the previously proposed cap on tax relief to charities, I just didn’t understand the logic. It was always going to deter large donations to charities, and in these clear times of austerity, when charities are finding it difficult anyway, what would be the logic in deterring wealthy individuals from making donations.

It would be nice to think they would do it anyway, but is it realistic to think that way? If there is limited incentive to donate, then logic tells me donations will be limited. So why didn’t the government think this way? What advice did they take….and from whom?

The Charities Aid Foundation had over a 1000 charities signed up for a call to government to think again.This they seemed to have done.

I asked yesterday was a U Turn a sign of a weak, strong or incompetent government? In this case I think it’s a big decision and the right one!

The vibrant city of Manchester was the first stop in the regional tour for Number 10′s new investment scheme.  Launched at a time when confidence in new small business has never been lower, this scheme offers unique opportunities to support new businesses in the North West.  With twelve years of work in private equity, the senior Government Whip and Lord Commissioner of the Treasury, Brooks Newmark MP, met with representatives of the business community in the Manchester region to discuss this scheme and how it can bring prosperity to local business in the area.  A spectrum of support  gathered together at an event hosted by the Peel Policy Forum (PPF), which incidentally is the North West’s first and only Think Tank.

Announced in the Chancellor’s 2012 Autumn Statement and part of the Government’s agenda for national growth, this scheme offers generous tax breaks for individuals investing in qualifying companies.  Just as those young homeowners are currently struggling to get a mortgage, new entrepreneurs struggle to gather the capital to start new ventures.  This project offers tax incentives to support these struggling new businesses.

Brooks Newmark MP commented, “I am delighted for Manchester to be the first place in my regional tour to launch this important scheme.  I look forward to speaking with local businesses and financial advisors at the Peel Policy Forum to try and gather enthusiasm of this fantastic investment opportunity.”

As Director of Business for PPF and former Director of a small business I felt incredibly excited at this announcement of the new Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme, and the obvious investment opportunities it can bring to the region, and the subsequent boost to growth we hope this scheme will instigate.

We weren’t disappointed, it was received with great enthusiasm, and there was some interesting and sometimes surprising points came from the meeting. There were a mix of investors present, including some very experienced Angel Investors.

One of the most interesting points in my view to arise, was a point actually brought up by one of the Angels who had concerns within his own community, that some investors were happy to make the investment in a new start up but then didn’t invest their time to ensure success. Basically some Angels were active and some were passive.

It was quite clear that ‘mentoring’ the new business was equally, if not more important than making the monetary investment. The enthusiasm around the table was infectious and most encouraging for the outlook for entrepreneurship and small business in the UK. We all agreed that meeting as we had, had presented a unique opportunity for Angels to perhaps work as teams, and therefor work in a more productive and engaging way in offering entrepreneurs all they need.

What Peel Policy Forum offered was indeed a unique forum in which to do this, and we immediately arranged provisional dates to host other such events in Liverpool and the Wirral.

I think all of this also fits perfectly with today’s announcement from government of the new scheme Chaired by James Caan to offer young entrepreneurs investments of £2500 in a new business startup.

It looks like young entrepreneurs could be the catalyst to kick start some much needed growth in the UK.

More information about the Government’s Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme can be found at www.hmrc.gov.uk/seedeis.”;
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When she was a teenager she asked her Father what made him a Conservative and what was the difference between that and the Labour Party. Her Father said well let me tell you…..

The Labour Party take everybody’s money when they get paid and distribute it to where they think it should go and leave you with just enough to live on. The Conservative Party take what’s needed out of your wage to give it to those who need it, and leave you with choice to spend the rest on what you would like.

I believe George Osborne’s budget yesterday started a path to return to that ethos. It was brave in many ways as he did what would help the economy, some of which he knew wouldn’t make great headlines. There was good news on corporation tax and bad news for smokers (maybe now’s the time to give up!)

The decision to reduce the top rate of tax to 45p was a good and brave decision. If the wealthmakers don’t like Britain we have a serious flaw in our plan for recovery. Today Glaxo Smith Kline announced the creation of 1000 new jobs, and the building of the first  new manufacturing plant in the UK for 40 years. This came after listening to George  Osborne’s budget. This was a budget for growth.

Much will be made of the so called ‘Granny Tax’ and the freezing of Age Allowance. At the moment over 65′s get a higher personal allowance of £9940 which increases to £10,090 if you’re over 75. As everybody’s personal allowance are to be increased and pensions have had the largest increases in years this will offset the freezing of age allowance to some extent. I think what’s also incredibly important to point out to all the left wing commentators accusing the government of robbing the middle income pensioners is that if they have an income in excess of £24,000pa they start to lose their age related allowances regardless.

Are these not the middle income pensioners? Would we call someone working full time and earning £24,000 a middle earner?

It’s an incredibly difficult time to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who lets be honest was left with an unimaginable amount of debt from the previous Labour Government.  It looks to me like that lady’s Father was right, lets hope we can all look forward to choosing how we spend a little more of our own money in the future.

I was brought up as a Roman Catholic, and if anyone asks my religion I say Roman Catholic, although I don’t attend Mass every week. When I recently married my long term partner and Father of my children, I did so first in a civil ceremony, but also had a blessing from a Catholic Priest. This I did as a divorcee as I couldn’t marry in the Catholic church. This is the Catholic church’s prerogative and I respect that.

In my view it’s not the job of government to dictate to the churches of any religion, and I don’t think the government is trying or intending to do this, in the case of gay marriage. They are simply saying that legally, gay couples in a loving relationship who wish to marry, will be allowed to do so in a civil ceremony that will be recognised within the law not the church . I have no issue with this. I would never think it acceptable to force the hand of any church/religion to hold marriage ceremonies within their church/mosque/synagogue/temple. This is not my understanding of what is being proposed, in fact I believe they wont be allowed to even if they wanted to. I totally support this approach.

I recently attended my friends Civil Partnership and I have to say I thoroughly supported it. Let us welcome any marriage of two people in a loving relationship who want to spend the rest of their lives together.This is what makes for a stronger society. I support the churches including my own Catholic one in their views, but believe it is the role of government to legislate on civil marriage as it has done for nearly 200 years.

The main problem being, that we would be mistaken in thinking that other EU members have protection similar to that of our own system. I was dismayed to learn that politicians are unable to stop an extradition, and often the EU country only has to claim that a crime has been committed.

It seems that if you’re British, under the EAW the Human Rights Act is in the main not taken in to account, where as when we in Britain try to deport criminals they are able to claim full protection from the act including Article 8 – the right to family life (we’ve all seen this used recently!)

So when can you expect to see a Warrant issued….well it seems refusing to pay for a dessert and going over an overdraft limit are just two of the most ridiculous occasions.

Greater Manchester Police set aside £650,369 for 16 union staff on an average of more than £40,000 each.

The South Wales force spent £327,275 on six employees (an average of £54,500 each), while ten in the Thames Valley Police shared £277,009.

My good friend Philip Davies MP, who obtained the figures, said: ‘The public expect the police budget to be spent on deterring crime and catching criminals, not on paying the salaries of trade union officials.
‘If the trade unions want to represent their members they should pay for it themselves, not expect the taxpayers to foot the bill. “
I couldn’t agree with Philip more, and it doesn’t stop with the Police, there are union officials being paid from tax payer’s money where ever you find unions.
If the unions can fund the Labour Party to the tune of £millions then it would appear to beg the question, why don’t they fund their representatives themselves.
Those who join their union and pay subscriptions are doing so willingly, and that’s their prerogative but I don’t remember ticking a box to say that I agree to part of my taxes going towards the salaries of union representatives.

I’ve worked and lived through many eras of change in Financial Services, but I have to say this is one of the most concerning. I think it’s been quite obvious for many years to a lot of us, that as a general rule we all need to save more for our retirement to make us less dependent on the state. The problem is that this provision is invariably driven by the better off. We need companies to want to do not just the absolute minimum required for their employees but what is right and proper. By penalising higher rate taxpayers with their pensions, it begs the question will this then encourage pensions to be provided in an adequate quantity for their employees.

This whole agenda is being driven by the Liberal Democrats, and I would urge the Conservatives to stand strong with their principles and continue to be the party of aspiration. If the speculation of reducing HR tax relief, reducing life time allowances (AA), taxing pension commencement lump sums (PCLS) and so on materialise, I fear pensions will become so unattractive to this bracket we will start to see the exact opposite of what we need to see.

I realise that savings need to be made and tough decisions have to be taken, and I’m afraid the Public Sector (PS)  need to be part of that. To read yesterday as I did the disquiet from doctors about their pension scheme moving from Final Salary to Career Average is terribly disappointing. They must realise this is only right and proper, and a neccassery move, the PS has been absent from the table for too long on these issues. If we all had career average pension schemes things would be a lot brighter.

As usual all these proposed changes could bring about administrative nightmares that eventually may see disappointing gains. I don’t want to see populist political decisions made on such important issues, I want to see what’s best to provide the necessary, and drive the economic recovery. I certainly don’t want to see a Conservative led Government making detrimental decisions on the very thing I would hope they would be guardians off….Pensions!

The problem is everybody has their own agenda, and thinks they they know what’s best for us. The other problem is women aren’t a homogeneous group, we are individuals and all have very different aspirations, wants and needs. What’s important to one woman can be irrelevant to another. That’s what makes us the wonderful individuals we are.

One of the hot topics at the moment is to increase the number of females on the boards of companies, which I personally whole heartily support. In support of this yesterday, and to try and enable women to progress to top jobs in the workplace David Cameron announced he was to examine plans under which working mothers would be given tax breaks for employing cleaners, babysitters or gardeners. All this is from a scheme being used in Sweden that has halved the cost of employing domestic help and has the added bonus of stopping domestic help from working in the cash-in-hand black market.

This resulted in a dressing down from a female Labour MP who rather obviously said how dreadful and out of touch the PM was for suggesting help for well off mothers who could afford domestic help. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t! You can see where I’m coming from here can’t you. 

It was also suggested that this would be to the detriment of tax credits going to low paid mothers. I had a quick look on HMRC’s website and it seems if you have children then you are entitled to child tax credits at varying levels on earnings up to £40,000. On earnings of £25,000 and below these are in my view significant amounts of money. Considering the average wage in the Britain is around £26,000 then this all seems quite fair. I have to say that if a person earns £40,000 pa then I’m not sure I want my taxes being used to give them child tax credits. So this all begs the question why is the Prime Minister’s potential (and it is a huge potential!) offer of help to working mothers on domestic help harming lower paid mothers.

Surely all working mothers need help at different levels and if we are to up the number at board level, schemes such as these should be considered, and I do mean just considered.

I would like us to look at how we can help all women reach their full potential and have the same opportunities as men. This could take any number of forms not all monetary. Can we not just work together sensibly on this and stop making it a battle between who’s paid what, and who is better than who?