In his speech to the Labour Party conference, the Shadow Chancellor, Ed Balls has called on the Government to give small businesses a one-year National Insurance tax-break for taking on new employees.

The aim of the scheme would be to help small businesses to grow and to create much-needed private sector jobs. No details of how the idea would work in practice, but Balls reckons the cost of the scheme could be covered by using money budgeted for the Government’s National Insurance rebate for new businesses.

The NI tax-break for small firms employing new staff is one of five steps the Shadow Chancellor is saying the Government should take right now to support the UK economy and create jobs. His other four suggestions are;

• Repeat the bank bonus tax again this year – and use the money to build 25,000 affordable homes and guarantee a job for 100,000 young people.
• Genuinely bring forward long-term investment projects – schools, roads and transport.
• A temporary reversal of January’s VAT rise.
• An immediate one year cut in VAT to 5% on home improvements, repairs and maintenance.

Accepts Labour mistakes and waste

In his speech the Shadow Chancellor, who was a key ally of Gordon Brown in the previous Labour Government, also admitted their administration had many mistakes while in power.

He singled out; abolishing the 10% tax rate, failing to control migration, wasting public money and the catastrophic failure to regulate the banks as particularly damaging errors.

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