Sir Roger Gale
Member of Parliament for Herne Bay and Sandwich (including West Thanet)
 

North Thanet`s MP, Roger Gale, has made an immediate post-budget plea for Thanet to be treated as “not the South East”  in the light of the Chancellor`s job protection National Insurance concessions announced today (Tuesday).
 
Speaking following the Chancellor`s statement the MP said:
 
“I hope that the Treasury will recognise that, exceptionally in the London/South East region, Thanet still has the highest levels of social deprivation – at figures that compare with the North East.
 
It would be quite wrong to exclude Thanet from the job-creating measures that the Chancellor has announced and to exclude local private-sector employers from a very sensible package.  Laura Sandys, as the Member of Parliament for South Thanet, and I have discussed this and are in complete agreement that the Trade Secretary and the Chancellor need to take on board our very peculiar and special local needs and we are immediately making representations to that effect”.
 
Commenting upon the rest of the package Roger Gale says:
 
“George Osborne has been faced with the most difficult and unpleasant inheritance of any Chancellor within historical memory.  He has reacted with the national interest at the forefront of his mind.  We shall all feel the pain but those with greater assets and income will, proportionally, bear a greater share of the cost of restoring our economy than those at the lower end of the scale and that is as it should be.  While the rise in VAT will impact upon every household, for example, the wealthier will pay more than those less well off because children`s clothes and food – the priorities of those on lower incomes – will rightly remain exempt.
 
George Osborne has presented this as the budget of “a progressive alliance governing in the national interest”. He can fairly make that claim and, having been left by Labour with a “scorched earth” bank balance, he deserves our national support”.

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