Porkies and half truths - 2

Duty Free
In the (pre-election) budget of 2005, and quoted in extravagent newspaper headlines, Gordon Brown announced, "I have today written to the European Commission proposing that a tax free limit on goods brought into the UK should rise from £145 to £1,000."

"Good old Gord!", several people from Kent and other regular travellers to stock up must have thought, especially when he repeated it in his 2006 budget.

When he failed to repeat his statement in 2007, or reported on any reply he had had, channel crossers might have been forewarned.

It has now emerged that his proposal has been met with a more modest increase, to only about £320, and this has been delayed until December 2008. This was agreed by the EU finance ministers.

Let us give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume that it was not just a pre-election half promise. It shows, however, that in this as in most things now decisions affecting entry into this country by British citizens are made in Brussels.

But there is a porky resulting from all this. Labour recently claimed in the House of Lords, that Brown was expressing a mere "aspiration". Does this mean that in the Brownian New Labour world all budget statements are mere aspirations? All the others have been relentlessly forced through.