Budget needs distribution ethic

ON Tuesday the Chancellor of the Exchequer will present his sixth budget to a nation which, according to recent opinion surveys in the national newspapers, is becoming increasingly impatient with the Government's economic policies. The raising of interest rates in a bid to curb consumer spending has served to alienate those who have traditionally supported Conservative Party economic policy.
With this in mind, the Chancellor will no doubt be tempted to recapture the support of dissenting Tories with further tax cuts made at the expense of public spending. This must not happen. It has become obvious since the last budget that the gap between rich and poor has widened. The governmental philosophy that lowering taxation and cutting public expenditure will result in a "trickling down" of wealth to the poorer sections of society has been thoroughly discredited.
In a postscript to the paperback verson of Better Together launched recently Archbishop Derek Worlock of Liverpool and his Anglican counterpart Dr David Sheppard draw attention to the inequality of wealth distribution during the Thatcher years: "Between 1978 and 1987 personal disposable income in Britain rose by 122.5 per cent . . . However, in the same period supplementary benefit levels, as compared with incomes in general, have fallen from 61 per cent of disposable income per capita in 1978 to 53 per cent in 1987. In other words, the incomes of the poorest groups have not kept up their share of the total disposable income of the nation."
When will the Government learn that when wealth is created at the top, it stays there? It does not just magically trickle down to the poor, it has to be sent there through Government intervention. This is why prominent Christians say any ethic of wealth creation has to be accompanied by governmental mechanisms to direct wealth to the needy, through a state benefits system which rests on comprehensively funded social services. This not only makes economic sense for any form of government that claims to be based on the welfare state, it is the Christian way, and conforms to the law of Christ governing man's relation to his neighbour.