The average UK family is paying almost £8,000 a year more in tax than in 1997, while often for many falling earnings are making it harder for households to meet these and other rising costs.

The average household now pays around £16,938 in taxes - £7,800 more than when Labour first came to power. The rise, when combined with worrying levels of personal debt and the increasing cost of bills, means households are very vulnerable to the coming recession.

Higher taxes and  easy credit over so many years has caused many people to be facing very difficult times. Until recently, average families were able to absorb tax increases partly through rising salaries, and for some through increasing personal debt to make ends meet. But since 2005 increases in disposable income after tax and housing costs have stalled or gone into reverse.

Worst of all, the poorest are hardest hit by Gordon Brown's stealth taxes.  Figures show that millions of the UK's poorest people will pay more in tax as a result of the scrapping of the 10p rate band. When they realised that up to 5 million people would be worse off  they came up with all sorts of clever measures to reduce the impact.  Even then, those that lost out were only reduced to 3 million. It's a disgrace that some of our poorest neighbours have lost out.

The poorest in our communities are really hard pressed by the credit crunch and Gordon Brown's recession. Nick de Bois believes people just don't have the ability to pay all Labour's taxes. Nick thinks the VAT cut was a bad idea and it would have been better to give the hard working people of Enfield a straight forward cut in basic rate income tax. which would have helped the most needy first.